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THE  CONDUCT  OF  MIND  SERIES 

EDITED    BY 

JOSEPH    JASTROW 


MENTAL 
ADJUSTMENTS 


THE  CONDUCT  OF  MIND  SERIES 

Edited  By  Joseph  Jaatrow,  Ph.D 

VOCATIONAL   PSYCHOLOGY 
By  H.  L.  HOLLINGWORTH,  PH.D. 

CHARACTER  AND  TEMPERAMENT 
By  JOSEPH  JASTROW,  PnJD. 

PSYCHOLOGY  IN  DAILY  LIFE 
By  C.  E.  SEASHORE, 


MENTAL    ADJUSTMENTS 

By  FREDERIC  LYMAN  WELLS,  PnJJ. 


D.  APPLETON   &  COMPANY 

Publi.her.  NEW   YORK 


212 


MENTAL 
ADJUSTMENTS 


D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY 

NEW   YORK  LONDON 

1922 


COPYRIGHT,  1917,  BY 
D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY 


Printed  in  the  United  Stales  of  America 


BF 

i?' 

Ml 


TO 

C.  M.  C. 


PREFACE 

A  schoolboy  defined  the  United  States  Constitution  as 
that  part  at  the  end  of  the  book  which  nobody  reads.  The 
preface  takes  a  similar  role  at  a  book's  beginning.  But  a 
preface  embodies  the  effect  of  writing  the  book,  and  it  is 
a  paltry  work  that  does  not  leave  its  author  wiser  than  it 
found  him. 

Dynamic  psychology  describes  the  conduct  of  mind  from 
the  standpoint  of  its  adjustment  to  the  world  we  live  in. 
It  is  the  most  truly  cultural  study.  It  is  founded  on  the 
motto  of  Socrates;  its  aim  is  to  give  one  the  most  insight 
into  his  own  and  others'  behavior.  To  the  individual,  bet- 
ter self-understanding  means  better  self-control,  and  wiser 
ordering  of  one's  actions  along  the  normal  paths  of  happi- 
ness. And  in  thus  appreciating  the  common  factors  in  hu- 
man nature,  one  is  made  more  sensible  of  an  underlying 
brotherhood  with  one's  fellow  men.  Familiarity  may  breed 
contempt,  but  it  is  worth  remembering  that  it  was  the  fox 
in  whom  contempt  was  bred.  As  Goethe  reminds  us,  men 
despise  rather  that  which  they  do  not  understand.  A  chem- 
ist does  not  despise  the  elements,  nor  an  astronomer  the 
stars. 

The  chief  business  of  a  book  of  knowledge,  above  all  a 
psychological  book,  is  not  to  tell  us  things,  but  to  enable  us 
to  see  for  ourselves  what  we  would  otherwise  miss.  A  lover 
of  birds  studies  the  notes  and  color  plates  in  books  not  for 
their  own  interest,  but  to  help  him  recognize  birds  in  the 
field.  The  proper  way  to  study  mankind  is  by  way  of  man ; 
what  we  learn  from  books  must  be  confirmed  or  corrected 
in  our  own  experience  before  it  has  any  real  meaning. 
Every  good  novel  or  good  drama  is  good  psychology  be- 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

cause  it  shows  how  real  people  differ  in  their  ways  of  meet- 
ing life's  situations.  Any  book  that  gives  us  ideas  of  this 
kind  can  add  to  our  psychological  knowledge. 

This  book  owes  much  to  Frazer  through  "The  Golden 
Bough,"  and  to  Sumner  through  the  "Folkways."  Other 
citations  are  given  in  place.  But  the  greatest  obligations  are 
to  those  who  made  it  possible  to  assimilate  these  works  and 
to  make  the  "strategic  regrouping"  of  their  ideas  for  the 
present  purpose.  This  is  due  chiefly  to  my  associations  with 
Macfie  Campbell,  August  Hoch  and  Charles  Lambert.  I 
am  indebted  for  certain  clinical  notes  also  to  Dr.  G.  S.  Ams- 
den;  and  to  Professors  Woodworth  and  Dodge  for  valued 
criticism  at  various  points  in  the  work.* 

F.  LYMAN  WELLS. 
Wavcrley,   Mass., 

March  23,  /pi/. 

*  Whoever  writes  a  volume  of  the  present  kind  has  oc- 
casion to  test  a  number  of  psychological  concepts.  Those  to 
which  I  would  more  especially  ask  my  colleagues'  attention  are 
affective  symbolism,  dissociative  symbolism,  affective  siphoning, 
the  wider  significance  given  to  trend,  the  distinction  between 
awareness  (a  narrower)  and  consciousness  (a  wider)  term, 
and  the  widened  concept  of  dissociation  (suggested  in  Hart). 
These  are  at  least  not  trite,  and  have  stood  well  such  a  test  in 
use  as  this  volume  could  give  them. 


LIST  OF  TITLES  ABBREVIATED  IN  FOOTNOTES 

D.  psa.  Met.,  Pfister,  Die  psychanalytische  Methode,  Leipzig  and 

Berlin,  1913. 
Maj.  Sympt.,  Janet,  The  Major  Symptoms  of  Hysteria,  Mac- 

millan,  1907. 
Path.  A.  Rel.,  Josiah  Moses,  Pathological  Aspects  of  Religions, 

Worcester,  1906. 
Unc.,  Prince,  The  Unconscious,  Macmillan,  1914. 


INTRODUCTION 

Under  a  convergent  variety  of  interests  the  concept  of 
mental  adjustment  has  assumed  a  larger  significance  and 
new  aspects.  Dr.  Wells  undertakes  to  interpret  and  organize 
the  material  from  which  insight  has  resulted.  The  funda- 
mental biological  conception  of  adapted  conduct,  as  that  con- 
forming to  and  advancing  the  welfare  of  the  individual  and 
the  race,  remains.  The  increasing  understanding  of  the 
psychical  factor  changes  the  view  of  the  mechanisms  by 
which  such  adaptation  is  reached  in  human  lives.  It  is  a 
complicated  matter  to  make  individuals  happy,  the  more 
complicated  the  individual  and  the  more  complicated  the 
circumstances  that  control,  the  greater  the  complexity  of 
adjustment.  The  complexity  is  not  alone  of  the  economic 
and  social  forces  that  demand  recognition  and  the  types  of 
efficiencies  which  the  struggle  for  existence  thus  remodeled 
enforces;  it  is  also  in  the  inner  adjustment  of  ideas  and 
ideals  imposed  by  the  complex  structure  of  the  world  of 
belief  and  by  the  world  of  morals  through  which  its  edicts 
are  enforced.  The  simpler  biological  satisfactions  persist. 
Man  cannot  renounce  his  nature  without  paying  the  penalty. 
Modern  psychology,  while  retaining  the  status  of  discipline, 
declines  to  accept  renunciation  as  a  solution.  Life  remains 
a  struggle  and  a  conflict.  But  the  manner  of  its  conduct  is 
profoundly  altered;  the  machine  gun  contrasted  with  the 
bow  and  arrow  involves  no  larger  a  reconstruction  than  that 
of  the  mental  life  required  by  the  change  from  primitive 
to  present-day  situations. 

The  science  of  happiness  is  the  most  intricate  of  human 
pursuits.  It  is  to  this  study  that  Dr.  Wells  makes  a  sig- 
nificant contribution.  As  a  pioneer,  he  blazes  his  trail;  oth- 

ix 


x  INTRODUCTION 

ers  will  be  guided  by  his  route,  though  the  future  highways 
may  diverge  from  his  triangulations.  His  conclusions  yield 
a  significant  picture.  Central  in  the  composition  stands  that 
complex  of  forces  imposed  by  nature,  embodied  in  the  func- 
tions of  sex,  and  from  that  focus  radiating  to  all  the  expres- 
sions of  human  energy,  desire,  will,  conduct.  To  consider 
the  manifestations  of  sex  so  insistently  and  unreservedly  may 
seem  to  many  unused  to  this  perspective  an  unseemly  in- 
trusion, or  an  unworthy  degradation.  The  libido  plays  with 
the  human  will,  mocks  at  its  attempts  to  escape  its  bonds, 
and  through  the  exponent  of  science  reveals  the  true  sig- 
nificance of  the  mind's  expressions.  For  the  unreserve  there 
can  be  and  need  be  no  other  justification  than  the  necessity 
of  facing  the  facts ;  if  the  position  can  be  established,  the 
adjustment  to  it  is  itself  an  obligation.  The  substitution  in 
any  measure  of  an  unreal  for  a  real  world  is  precisely  one 
of  the  dangers  which  the  thesis  of  the  volume  points  out. 
But  inherently  there  is  neither  degradation  nor  despair. 
The  life  of  ideals  of  spiritual  adjustment  is  as  fully  recog- 
nized as  a  human  need,  growing  with  the  advance  of  culture, 
as  any  other  —  for  those  competent  to  enter  into  the  king- 
dom, more  than  any  other.  The  complexities  of  happiness, 
the  steadying  and  illumination  of  conduct  by  conceptions  of 
purpose,  demand  recognition ;  that  the  needs  of  the  spirit 
demand  the  castigation  of  the  flesh  is  denied. 

The  volume  moves  toward  a  definite  position  in  regard  to 
the  control  and  expression  of  vital  trends.  Such  a  position 
has  a  direct  bearing  upon  ethics  and  education  and  all  the 
regulative  systems  that  distinguish  between  good  and  bad, 
between  the  more  and  less  desirable.  For  adjustment  im- 
plies value,  indeed  sets  the  standard  of  value.  Dr.  Wells  at- 
tempts an  analysis  of  the  source  of  such  standards,  and  an 
appraisal  of  their  worth  and  fitness  for  the  life  that  we  of 
today  must  attain.  With  the  task  thus  set,  his  procedure 
naturally  is  concerned  with  orderly  unfoldment  and  presenta- 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

tion  of  detail.  Beginning  with  the  biological  relations,  he 
promptly  introduces  the  mental  factor,  and  presents  the  mind 
and  its  products  as  an  instrument  of  adjustment.  The  use 
and  waste  of  the  mental  trends  is  his  theme.  Right  think- 
ing is  the  indispensable  requisite  of  right  action.  The  mind's 
privilege  is  at  once  its  power  and  its  danger.  The  substitu- 
tion of  thoughts  for  realities  takes  us  back  to  primitive  man 
and  the  unschooled  habits  of  his  mind,  to  magic  and  super- 
stition ;  it  takes  us  collaterally  to  the  breakdown  of  mind  in 
the  forms  of  insanity,  in  which  the  distinction  of  fact  and 
fancy  fades.  The  mechanisms  of  the  process  are  absorbing. 
The  scope  of  symbolism  is  important  and  receives  a  chapter 
to  itself.  Humor,  rhetoric,  magic,  dreams,  delusion,  reflect 
the  force  at  work  —  a  common  habit  with  vastly  different 
outcomes. 

Difficulties  and  failures  of  adjustment  furnish  the  basis 
for  the  more  elaborate  analyses.  No  life  proceeds  evenly 
without  disturbance.  Conflict  of  trends  is  inevitable.  But 
many  of  these  are  of  our  own  making.  Man  sets  up  his 
resistances;  there  is  no  more  characteristic  human  product 
than  the  taboo.  Restraint  without  repression  is  the  diffi- 
cult thing.  Dr.  Wells  has  much  to  offer  on  the  intellectual 
side  to  show  the  community  of  the  process  by  which  false 
adjustments  of  the  abnormal  proceed  and  those  that  are  re- 
sponsible for  the  lesser  failures.  Here  particularly  the  sex 
theme  enters.  The  repressed  or  buried  eroticism  finds  an 
abnormal  vent.  The  mind  loses,  or  fails  to  attain  its  unity 
of  expression,  its  concordant  development,  and  fragments 
break  away  in  dissociated  functions.  The  house  is  divided ; 
conflicting  and  rival  and  disintegrating  personalities  may 
develop.  The  study  of  these  forms  a  part  of  the  argument ; 
they  express  the  risks  that  are  run.  Along  with  the  ab- 
normal, the  experimental  approaches  to  the  problem  are  con- 
sidered. The  nature  of  intelligence  and  the  modes  of  test- 
ing it;  the  scope  and  significance  of  individual  differences; 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

the  newer  methods  of  attacking  the  higher  judging  processes 
in  terms  of  which  adjustment  proceeds:  these  are  included 
in  the  survey. 

The  reader  will  pursue  the  volume  with  two  increasing 
convictions.  The  first  is  that  the  emotional  life  is  far  more 
central  in  human  regulation  than  we  are  wont  to  recognize. 
Happiness  is  an  emotional  state;  and  the  mind's  finer  in- 
tellectual resources  are  but  ways  of  attaining  grades  and 
shades  of  content  that  transcend  the  simpler,  lesser  modes, 
"  vacant  of  our  glorious  gains."  By  reason  of  the  deeper 
rooting  of  the  emotional  life  in  the  vital  sources  of  energy, 
is  its  adjustment  at  once  dependent  upon  the  integrity  of 
primitive  satisfactions;  it  likewise  pervades  all  derivative 
expressions  of  longing  and  satisfaction.  Human  nature,  as 
it  transcends,  must  also  incorporate.  The  other  conviction 
is  similar  to  it:  that  beliefs,  tendencies,  inclinations,  how- 
ever intellectually  expressed,  are  more  complex  than  cold, 
objective  ideas.  Optimism  or  pessimism  is  more  a  tem- 
perament than  a  conviction.  In  fact,  and  this  is  the  closing 
theme  of  the  book,  much  of  the  mind's  energy  is  to  be 
understood  as  balancing  material  for  imperfectly  satisfied 
trends.  Failing  of  one  satisfaction,  we  seek  another.  Or, 
with  the  energy  originally  derived  from  one  need  but  not 
there  absorbed,  we  employ  it  to  the  gain  of  newer  satisfac- 
tions and  the  profit  of  the  world  and  ourselves.  Never  do 
we  escape  from  the  system,  never  do  we  lose  contact  with 
the  source  from  which  all  blessings  —  and  by  their  abuse, 
all  evils  —  flow. 

So  large  a  theme  is  capable  of  varied  presentation.  Dr. 
Wells  reflects  his  professional  interest  in  the  disqualifications 
and  liabilities  of  the  abnormal  mind ;  his  training  is  equally 
adequate  in  the  study  of  experimental  problems  among  the 
normal.  Each  reenforces  the  other  and  gives  to  his  conclu- 
sions an  added  value.  The  work  should  find  its  place  as 
an  aid  to  the  general  reader,  as  a  guide  to  the  psychological 
student,  whatever  his  practical  interests  or  his  professional 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

purpose  may  be.  Ideas  irregularly  scattered  through  the 
technical  literature  are  here  brought  together,  with  much 
original  interpretation,  into  a  consistent  whole. 

JOSEPH  JASTROW. 
University  of  Wisconsin, 
Madison,  Wisconsint 
March, 


CONTENTS 


I.    MENTAL  ADAPTATION I 

II.  USE  AND  WASTE  IN  THOUGHT  AND  CONDUCT        .  28 

x'  HI.    SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION 71 

IV.  THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EMOTION        .        .        .        .114 

V.    TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION 153 

^VI.  MECHANISMS  IN  DISSOCIATED  IDEAS        .        .        .  204 

VII.    EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES 227 

VIII.    BALANCING  FACTORS 273 

INDEX .        „  321 


MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 


CHAPTER  I 

MENTAL   ADAPTATION 

EVERY  living  thing,  in  order  to  live,  must  behave 
toward  the  outer  world  in  more  or  less  restricted  ways. 
The  simple  bit  of  living  substance  that  we  call  the  amoeba 
is  endowed  with  only  a  few  of  these  modes  of  response. 
It  can  move  by  extending  its  "  false  feet "  in  a  given 
direction.  When  it  meets  a  particle  of  food  it  must 
spread  itself  out  over  it  to  consume  it;  when  it  meets  an 
injurious  substance  it  must  roll  itself  into  a  ball  and  thus 
offer  the  least  surface.  By  such  behavior,  or  reactions, 
the  animal  and  its  kind  survive;  the  reactions  described 
are  well  adapted  for  that  individual  and  its  environment. 
An  amoeba  that  rolled  itself  up  on  touching  food,  or  one 
that  spread  itself  out  over  poison,  would  show  a  condi- 
tion quite  similar  to  those  disorders  of  conduct  that,  in 
human  beings,  are  called  insanity.  It  would  be  unable 
to  look  after  itself,  and,  in  the  absence  of  care  by  its 
fellow-creatures,  would  perish.  Life  depends  upon 
adapted  behavior. 

Organisms  higher  in  the  scale  of  evolution  have  much 

more  numerous  and  complicated  ways  of  reaction  in  life. 

They  build  snares  that  catch  their  food,  they  escape  the 

uncertainties  of  the  chase  by  vegetable  supplies  which 

2  i 


g  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

they  can  control,  they  lay  aside  stores  of  food  for  times 
of  scarcity,  or  for  their  young.  They  conceal  themselves 
when  their  enemies  are  about,  they  build  shelters,  they 
form  social  systems,  and  a  marvelous  complexity  of  re- 
action develops  about  the  reproductive  instincts. 

We  understand  that,  in  the  progress  of  evolution,  dif- 
ferent structures  are  developed  which  are  adapted  to  the 
animal's  purposes.  Of  this  the  protective  mimicry 
among  insects  affords  some  of  the  most  exquisite  exam- 
ples. Similarly,  different  abilities  for  reacting  develop 
which  better  meet  the  demands  of  the  outside  world. 
The  dragon  fly  builds  no  house  at  all,  the  mud  dauber 
wasp  but  an  unsightly  affair;  the  honeybee  builds  an 
architectural  habitat.  History  is  the  record  of  the  mocli- 
^(.''fication  of  behavior  in  the  human  race.  Leander  swam 
the  Hellespont;  his  descendants  fly  it. 

The  adaptations  that  animals  must  make  have  a  three- 
yj    vT.fold   division;    the   search    for    food,    the   lookout    for 
,^^1  enemies,  and  the  continuance  of  the  species.     To  what- 
&F       ever  extent  the  animal  reacts  in  ways  to  achieve  these 
g+     ends,  the  organism's  behavior  is  well  adapted  to  its  en- 
vironment, or  well  balanced.     The  orb  weaving  spider 
must  not  come  down  into  its  net  before  it  is  too  dark  for 
the  wasp  to  fly;  the  tiger  must  not  be  too  slow  in  seiz- 
ing, or  too  impatient  in  awaiting,  the  deer  that  comes 
to  <irink.     These  would  be  ineffective  carrying  out  of 
reactions  in  themselves  suitable.     But  nature  so  orders 
that  actions  which  are  good  for  one  of  the  animal's  in- 
terests may  be  bad  for  another.     The  brook  trout  in- 
cautiously pursuing  the  minnow  is  set  upon  and  devoured 
by  the  pickerel.     The  spiderling  that  loves  not  wisely 
but  too  well  is  seized  and  eaten  by  the  object  of  his  un- 
welcome devotion.     And  when  the  wolf  keeps  cautiously 


MENTAL  ADAPTATION  * 

approaching  the  bait  in  the  trap  and  again  drawing  away 
on  perceiving  the  suspicious  scent  he  shows  in  simplest 
form   the    never-ending   conflict   of    instinctive   trends,   ' 
which  plays  a  comprehensive  part  in  life,  and  which  in    >c 
human  beings  is  the  source  of  the  perplexity  of  right 
action. 

With  the  right  action  determined,  the  best  adaptation 
lies  in  its  most  effective  accomplishment.  How  effec- 
tively a  given  "  right  thing  "  can  be  done  is  clearly  not 
inaccessible  to  experimental  study.  The  main  structure 
of  comparative  or  animal  psychology  considers  such 
problems.  We  place  the  animal  in  a  situation  to  which 
it  must  react  in  a  certain  way  to  get  its  food.  The 
difficulty  of  this  situation,  and  the  factors  that  enter  into 
it,  may  be  varied  within  wide  limits.  We  observe 
whether  the  animal  can  learn  to  locate  its  food  by  going 
to  the  right  or  left,  by  going  where  a  certain  light  orv  \~ 
color  is  shown,  by  finding  its  way  through  a  maze  or  by 
opening  a  box;  and  we  can  measure  how  long  it  takes' 
to  learn  to  make  these  adaptations,  as  well  as  how  many 
and  what  sorts  of  mistakes  are  made.  The  comparative 
psychologist  tries  to  find  out  to  how  complex  and  what 
kind  of  situations  the  animal  can  adapt  itself,  and  how 
much  its  behavior  can  be  modified  to  make  adaptations 
to  strange  and  novel  surroundings. 

Only  a  small  part  of  human  psychology  has  dealt  with 
such  problems.  They  are  included  in  the  "choice- 
reaction  "  experiments.  The  subject  is  told  to  do  one 
thing  when  he  gets  one  sort  of  stimulus,  and  another 
thing  when  he  gets  another  sort  of  stimulus.  For  ex- 
ample, he  is  to  tap  with  his  first  finger  when  he  sees  a 
red  light,  with  his  second  finger  when  he  sees  a  blue 
light,  with  his  third  finger  when  he  sees  a  green  light, 


4  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

etc.  In  such  reactions  mistakes  will  occur  now  and  then, 
just  as  in  typewriting  one  strikes  a  wrong  key  occasion- 
ally although  knowing  perfectly  well  which  is  the  right 
key.  These  "  false  reactions  "  are  failures  of  adaptation 
to  the  circumstances,  just  as  it  is  a  failure  of  adaptation 
when  the  animal  looks  for  its  food  in  the  green  compart- 
ment when  it  is  being  trained  to  look  for  it  in  the  red. 
The  purpose  of  these  experiments  is  to  create  situations 
which  call  for  different  sorts  of  movements,  and  by 
measuring  the  quickness  with  which  the  subject  acquires 
these  proper  movements,  and  the  number  of  false  move- 
ments made,  to  judge  of  his  adaptive  capacity  to  the  situ- 
ations. Every  sort  of  human  perception,  from  color 
sense  to  moral  sense,  may  thus  be  dealt  with,  but  we 
meet  a  certain  difficulty  when  we  would  interpret  these 
observations  as  directly  as  they  may  be  interpreted  in 
the  case  of  animals. 

The  comparative  psychologist  often  deplores  the  arti- 
ficiality of  the  conditions  to  which  he  has  to  subject 
his  animals.  Yet,  how  much  closer  to  nature  they  are  in 
comparison  with  the  conditions  in  the  laboratory  where 
human  subjects  are  tested!  No  such  direct  and  primal 
motives  are  likely  to  enter  into  our  psychological  experi- 
ments as  the  animal's  quest  for  food.  To  get  near  these 
we  must  go  to  Nature's  laboratory,  and  observe  her  ex- 
perimental studies  of  our  struggle  for  existence.  If  the 
hunter  misses  his  game  he  misses  his  dinner,  but  the 
psychologist  who  strikes  the  right-hand  telegraph  key 
when  he  should  have  struck  the  left  merely  makes  a  dot 
in  the  wrong  place  on  the  ribbon  record.  The  differ- 
ence between  the  adaptations  of  life  and  those  of  the 
laboratory  is  just  the  difference  between  shooting  for  a 
livelihood  and  shooting  at  a  target.  A  good  "  game- 


MENTAL  ADAPTATION  5 

shot "  will  ordinarily  be  a  fair  "  target-shot,"  but  a  fine 
"  target-shot  "  may  be  a  poor  "  game-shot." 

Up  to  this  point  we  have  thought  of  adaptation  en- 
tirely in  terms  of  behavior  and  conduct,  thus  empha- 
sizing in  every  case  the  motox_reactipn  to  the  outside 
world.  This  is  necessary  in  order  to  give  the  best  defi- 
nitions of  good  and  bad  adaptations,  since  it  is  in  these 
objective  instances  that  the  good  or  bad  result  of  the 
adaptation  is  most  immediately  evident.  We  are  now 
ready  to  shift  our  viewpoint  and  approach  the  focus  of 
our  subject.  We  all  know  what  a  chemical  reaction  is, 
as  the  change  of  zinc  and  hydrochloric  acid  into  zinc 
chloride  and  hydrogen;  we  know  what  a  physiological 
reaction  is,  as  the  contraction  of  the  frog's  muscle  to  the 
stimulus  of  the  electric  current.  Similarly  we  define  our 
highest  types  of  voluntary  behavior  as  reactions  for 
which  the  antecedent  situation  is  conceived  as  the  stim- 
ulus. But  it  is  plain  —  and  also  essential  —  that  the 
movement  or  behavior  observed  in  such  a  process  is 
very  far  from  implying  the  sum  total  of  what  happens  in 
us.  If  John  hears  that  his  absent  friend  James  has  re- 
ceived a  distinguished  honor,  his  only  outward  and  visible 
reaction  may  be  to  write  him  a  letter  of  congratulation; 
but  his  total  response  to  the  news  contains  a  vast  number 
of  mental  associations  —  images  of  his  friend  and  the 
circumstances  of  his  good  fortune,  pleasure  that  James' 
qualities  have  brought  a  well  earned  recognition,  jealousy 
that  he  did  not  get  it  himself,  etc.  With  nearly  all  these  x 
factors  we  can  deal  only  as  activities  of  the  mind.  But  v 
they  are  just  as  much  reactions  to  the  event  as  the  writ- 
ing of  the  letter.  They  may  not  be  involved  with  any 
direct  motor  reaction.  Thus  our  sympathies  in  the  Euro- 
pean war,  our  opinions  about  Japanese  exclusion  or 


6  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

woman  suffrage,  represent  our  mental  reactions  to  these 
propositions,  whether  or  not  they  have  produced  any 
characteristic  reaction  in  our  conduct.  All  mental  pro- 
cess is  simply  mental  reaction  to  what  has  gone  before; 
and  these  mental  reactions,  equally  with  motor  reactions, 
are  good  or  bad  according  as  they  contribute  to  the  ad- 
vancement or  detriment  of  the  organism.  Generally 
speaking,  sincere  pleasure  at  his  friend's  good  fortune 
would  be  a  good  reaction  on  John's  part.  Jealousy,  a 
feeling  that  he  himself  deserved  it  more,  a  "  what's  the 
use  of  trying  "  attitude,  would  be  a  distinctly  bad  mental 
reaction. 

Comparative  psychology  can  deal  with  the  men- 
tal processes  of  animals  only  by  inference  from  their 
movements ;  and  it  is  fair  to  assume  that  the  animal  pro- 
cesses are  so  much  simpler  than  ours  that  the  behavior 
>  criterion  is  adequate.  But  ordinary  good  sense  tells  us 
what  a  treacherous  guide  visible  human  reactions  are  to 
the  motives,  real  or  pretended,  that  lie  behind -them,  and 
what  grievous  mistakes  would  be  made,  and  often  are 
made,  in  attempting  to  act  upon  inference  from  them. 
Most  thoughts  have  no  immediate  and  unequivocal  motor 
expression  that  can  be  observed. 

A  great  philosopher  asks  us  to  suppose  that  our  whole 
being  and  all  that  existence  means  to  us  is  dependent  upon 
our  some  day  winning  or  losing  a  game  of  chess.  Is  it 
not  likely  that  we  should  spend  considerable  time  in  learn- 
ing the  commoner  opening  gambits  and  endgames,  in 
studying  the  games  of  other  players,  and  in  the  solution 
of  problems?  What  should  we  think  of  parents  or  edu- 
cators who  allowed  their  charges  to  grow  up  without 
teaching  them  that  a  roojc  is  more  valuable  than  a  knight, 
or  that  a  pawn  becomes  a  queen  upon  reaching  the  eighth 


row?  Yet  the  worth  of  existence  depends  on  success  in 
a  game  infinitely  more  complicated  than  that  of  chess, 
in  which  no  mistake  is  ever  overlooked  and  no  move  ever 
taken  back,  and  where  knowledge  from  one's  own  experi- 
ence often  comes  too  late  for  use. 

Our  moves  in  this  game  are  the  reactions  by  which  we 
seek  to  adapt  ourselves  to  the  play  around  us,  and  many 
of  the  essential  reactions  are  in  the  form  of  mental  re- 
sponses. Some  persons  play  this  game  well,  others 
poorly ;  some,  like  the  feeble-minded,  so  poorly  that  they 
cannot  play  it  by  themselves  at  all.  A  "  dynamic 
psychology  "  brings  these  reactions  together  as  processes 
of  adaptation,  with  particular  reference  to  the  value  of 
the  experience:  whether  the  adaptation  is  good  or  bad 
for  the  individual.  Many  mental  reactions  are  bad  be- 
cause they  seek  to  meet  material  wants  by  a  mental  path, 
which  indeed  is  easier,  but  as  futile  as  to  seek  to  escape 
starvation  by  simply  imagining  food.  Yet  exactly  such 
attitudes  and  bad  ways  of  reacting  to  situations  in  life 
often  result  from  being  misled  about  the  real  nature  of 
the  reactions,  and  the  particular  dangers  that  underlie 
them.  The  control  of  the  external  forces  of  nature 
means  to  gain  more  insight  into  their  principles  and  an 
ability  to  act  more  intelligently  in  accord  with  them. 
Thus  is  the  best  control  over  personalities  obtained  —  by 
an  open  understanding  of  the  forces  to  which  they  are 
subject.  Plain  living  and  high  thinking  is  an  ideal ;  but 
high  living  and  plain  thinking  is  another,  that  is  not  to  be 
despised. 

There  are  certain  things  which  every  animal,  from 
amceba  to  man,  tries  to  get ;  when  we  see  an  animal  try- 
ing to  get  a  thing,  we  infer  that  is  something  the  animal 
wants.  The  harder  the  animal  tries  to  get  it,  the  more  it 


8  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

is  apparent  that  the  animal  wants  it.  So  far  as  we  can 
gather,  animal  wants  are  regularly  pursued  to  their 
realization  except  where  external  factors  prevent  it;  also 
there  is  probably  no  human  obstacle  that  does  not  yield 
to  a  strong  enough  human  will.  But  human  ambitions 
and  desires  are  much  less  elementary  and  more  crossed 
or  interfered  with  by  opposing  internal  trends.  We  may 
want  a  thing,  but  it  may  necessitate  our  giving  up  some- 
,  thing  else  that  we  want  to  keep;  or  we  may  dislike  to 
<  face  the  inconveniences,  the  hardships,  the  dangers,  that 
are  the  cost  of  securing  it.  All  this  makes  our  striving 
for  it  less  effective,  perhaps  so  much  so  that  it  becomes 
impossible  for  us  to  satisfy  the  desire.  To  situations  like 
this,  which  are  very  common,  the  mind  has  definite  ways 
of  adapting  itself. 

There  is  no  better  way  of  showing  the  principle  of 
such  reactions  than  by  enlarging  somewhat  upon  that 
sterling  and  classical  illustration  of  mental  adaptation  to 
an  impossible  wish,  which  is  the  theme  of  the  parable  of 
the  fox  and  the  grapes.  My  colleague,  Dr.  A.  A.  Brill, 
would  doubtless  have  made  this  fox  an  only  child,  who 
by  flattery  and  adulation  had  been  persuaded  that  he  was 
an  individual  of  distinctively  superior  worth  and  ability. 
PI  is  self-love  not  tolerating  the  admission  that  he  could 
not  reach  the  grapes,  he  made  the  mental  adaptation  to 
his  failure  by  taking  the  attitude  that  they  were  sour, 
and  not  worth  reaching;  there  was  thus  no  admission  of 
weakness  in  the  failure  to  get  them.  But  soon  he  comes 
to  a  similar  bunch  of  grapes  that  hangs  within  an  inch 
of  his  nose.  "  These  are  just  the  same,"  he  reflects;  "  if 
I  took  these,  people  might  think  I  lied  when  I  said  the 
others  were  sour.  I  am  no  liar,  but  always  consistent, 
and  true  to  myself."  When  at  length  the  pangs  of 


MENTAL  ADAPTATION  9 

hunger  force  him  to  take  the  grapes,  they  are  spoiled,  and 
give  him  well  earned  indigestion. 

This  first  type  of  adaptation  to^an  unattainable  desire 
consists  in  denying  its  existence,  and  minimizing  the  value 
oTTEe  thing  desirecT. lTls"a^Bad  type  of  adaptation  be- 
cause the  wish  is  genuine  nevertheless,  and  the  false  atti- 
tude  makes  it  much  harder  to  meet  any  future  situation 
in  which  the  wish  could  and  should  be  realized. 

A  second  type  of  adaptation  concedes  the  value  of  the 
end  desired,  but,  in  the  absence  of  strength  or  unified 
will  to  attain  it  directly,  meets  it  by  imagining  a  realiza- 
tion. These  reactions  are  much  more  complex  than  the 
mere  denial  of  the  wish,  and  their  essentially  mental 
quality  is  distinctive.  The  daydream  is  the  most  common 
example.  Here  a  genuine  pleasure  is  obtained  from  pic- 
turing the  trend  as  realized,  though  the  sense  that  it  is  not 
so  is  preserved,  and  the  subject  does  not  act  as  if  it  were 
realized.  Mental  disease,  however,  shows  instances  in 
which  these  fancies  become  uncontrolled  so  that  they  seem 
to  be  real ;  —  they  are  called  "  wish-fulfilling  deliria." 
These  are  evident  substitutions  of  imagination  for  real- 
ity, which  need  only  be  mentioned  to  be  understood.  Just 
as  many  of  us  can  call  to  mind  music  or  natural  scenery 
in  ways  that  give  us  pleasure,  so  it  is  pleasant  to  create 
for  ourselves  images  of  the  more  complex  events  and 
surroundings  that  represent  our  ambitions  and  our  hopes. 

The  stock  of  imagination  that  we  get  from  our  own 
experience  is  powerfully  reinforced  by  the  things  which 
other  people  imagine  for  us,  and  put  at  our  disposal  in 
the  form  of  literature.  We  read  novels  for  entertain- 
ment, and  the  source  of  that  entertainment  is  that  the 
stories  depict,  or  at  least  culminate  in,  situations  in  which 
we  should  like  to  find  ourselves.  The  small  boy  likes 


10  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

his  "  Monte  Cristo "  because  it  supplies  him  witH  the 
material  to  identify  himself  with  a  great  and  powerful 
personage  such  as  he  would  like  to  be.  A  novel  or  simi- 
lar imaginative  production  holds  our  interest,  u  grips " 
us,  in  so  far  as  it  suggests  to  us  persons  or  episodes  that 
we  would  like  to  be,  have  or  experience.  This  is  not 
altered  by  the  fact  that  these  likings  are  not  necessarily 
clearly  understood. 

Thoughts  of  pleasant  things,  things  that  meet  the 
normal  trends  of  our  organism,  are  normally  pleasant 
thoughts  —  thoughts  that  we  like  and  encourage.  But 
that  is  not  always  the  case;  there  is  a  definite  state  of 
mind  in  which  it  is  unpleasant  and  even  painful  to  con- 
template brightness  or  happiness  elsewhere.  The  suf- 
ferer from  melancholia  draws  his  shutters  tight  upon  the 
cloudless  day  that  he  may  not  behold  the  smiling  face 
of  nature.  A  young  man  of  inferior  constitution  frankly 
admits  that  he  cannot  read  love  stories  because  they  bring 
too  near  home  to  him  his  own  failures  in  this  regard. 
*  In  such  situations  the  mind  shuns  the  imagination  of 
normal  human  happiness,  and  seeks  a  solution  amid 
fancies  of  tragedy  and  suffering.  Another  type  of  imag- 
inative reaction  still  presents  an  abnormal  solution  of 
our  trends ;  but  instead  of  ending  in  tragedy,  it  works 
out  a  happy  solution  through  situations  that  are  often 
equally  remote  from  reality.  Apt  illustrations  of  both 
reactions  may  be  found  in  the  stories  of  Edgar  Allan 
Poe.  The  depressive  or  tragic  reaction  is  exemplified  in 
such  imaginative  situations  as  "  The  Fall  of  the  House  of 
Usher,"  or  "  The  Pit  and  the  Pendulum  " ;  the  opposite 
is  seen  in  such  fancies  as  "  Eleonora,"  "  Ligeia,"  or  "  The 
Domain  of  Arnheim."  "  The  Assignation "  has  ele- 
ments of  both  types. 


MENTAL  ADAPTATION  11 

The  free  imagination  of  wished-for  things  results  well 
for  the  mind  through  painting  in  more  glowing  colors 
the  excellence  of  what  is  wished  for,  and  firing  the  ambi- 
tion to  strive  for  it  the  more  intensely.  In  Miss  Bryant's 
novel,  little  //•/;*  Hibbault  trudged  along  by  the  side  of 
his  exhausted  and  self-immolated  mother:  "I'll  make 
roads  when  I'm  big,"  he  told  her,  "  real  good  ones  that 
you  can  walk  on  easy  " — "  A  vision  of  countless  toiling 
human  beings  traveling  on  his  roads  all  down  the  coming 
ages,  knowing  them  for  good  roads,  and  praising  the 
maker."  And  such  roads  we  know  he  did  build,  not 
only  for  people's  feet,  but  for  their  lives.  No  possession 
is  more  precious  than  the  power  to  create  such  visions, 
so  long  as  it  gives  stimulus  for  putting  them  into  action. 
But  the  case  is  not  always  so  fortunate. 

Physics  teaches  that  if  a  substance  be  subjected  to 
different  forces,  such  as  temperature  or  pressure,  "  criti- 
cal points  "  are  reached,  that  is,  points  above  and  below 
which  the  properties  of  the  substances  are  greatly  differ- 
ent. Water  has  critical  points  at  32°,  where  it  freezes, 
or  212°  Fahrenheit,  where  it  changes  into  steam. 
Imagination  acts  similarly  upon  character.  It  has  a  criti- 
cal point  where  we  cease  to  be  fired  by  the  imagination, 
but  drop  back  upon  it  alone.  Poets  have  sung  the  mental 
delights  that  may  come  from  nothing  but  imagery ;  what 
is  equally  important  is  that  imagination  carries  with  it  no 
dependence  upon,  or  responsibility  to,  the  external  world. 
It  is  never  kept  late  at  its  office,  and  runs  up  no 
bills. 

This  fact,  that  daydreams  are  not  continually  con- 
fronted with  experience,  makes  it  possible  for  them  to 
take  on  forms  that  do  not  fit  the  actual  conditions  of  one's 
life. 


12  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

Those  as  yet  without  appreciation  of  the  actual  values 
of  life  can  in  earlier  years  build  up  ambitions  whose  satis- 
faction would  never  bring  satisfaction  with  life.  Such 
false  attitudes  make  it  harder  to  act  in  ways  that  bring 
a  good  adjustment  to  life.  Thus,  nearly  all  younger  per- 
sons indulge  in  imaginations  of  their  future  households, 
and  yet  the  more  elaborate  and  fixed  these  become  in  the 
mind,  the  more  difficult,  perhaps  impossible,  such  ideas 
can  make  it  for  the  individual  to  know  and  attain  genuine 
solutions  when  they  present  themselves. 

The  voluntary  movements  that  we  make  we  regard  as 
indeed  "  voluntary  " ;  that  is,  we  feel  that  we  acted  so 
because  we  judged  it  best  so  to  act,  and  that  we  could 
Ij^ve  •acted^otjier.wis^  if  we  hac^  so  chosen.  $o  deep- 
-"  rbStecris  this  feeling  of  the  freedom  of  our  actions,  that 
its  loss  becomes  a  conspicuous  symptom  of  mental  dis- 
ease; the  symptom  is  referred  to  as  "  ideas  of  influence," 
or  the  "  feeling  of  passivity."  This  feeling  of  the  inde- 
pendence or  control  of  our  actions  seems  closely  associ- 
ated with,  is  perhaps  the  cause  of,  another  very  promi- 
nent mental  fact,  namely,  a  feeling  of  motive  for  our  ac- 
tions. Since  we  control  our  actions,  we  want  them  to 
have  a  reasonable  motive;  man  calls  himself  a  rational 
animal,  one  guided  by  reason  in  his  conduct.  Our  ac- 
tions thus  demand  a  specific  mental  adaptation,  namely, 
the  assignment  of  satisfactory  motives  for  them. 

The  process  by  which  we  derive  these  satisfactory 
'  motives  is  known  as  rationalisation;  to  rationalize  an  act 
means  to  assign  a  reason  for  it.  The  first  thing  to  note 
about  rationalization  —  wherein  it  differs,  as  night  from 
day,  from  genuine  reasoning  controlled  by  experience  — 
is  that  it  is  personal  and  subjective.  John  tells  us  that  he 
threw  up  his  job  because  his  chief  did  not  treat  him 


MENTAL  ADAPTATION  IS 

fairly;  but  James,  whom  the  chief  treated  in  quite  the 
same  manner,  does  not  feel  unjustly  dealt  with.  John's 
rationalization  does  not  give  the  real  cause,  which  lies  in 
a  difference  of  personality  between  John  and  James. 
James  says  he  does  not  marry  because  his  income  is  only 
twenty-five  hundred  dollars  a  year,  but  most  people  marry 
on  far  less.  We  must  always  seek  the  ultimate  motive, 
and  ask  why  that  reason  is  so  effective  with  this  particu- 
lar person. 

Our  rationalizations  give  a  motive  which  our  person- 
ality will  accept  as  a  fitting  one  without  giving  the  real 
cause  of  our  actions.  Now  the  real  motives  for  our  con- 
duct often  go  back  to  fundamental  trends  which  we  have 
been  taught  to  regard  as  degraded ;  we  believe  that  we  are 
base  if  we  act  from  such  motives;  our  acts  are  thus 
rationalized  in  the  name  of  some  other  principle  that  we 
have  been  taught  to  respect.  If  our  neighbor  insults  us, 
we  strike  him,  not  because  we  are  angry,  but  because  our 
honor  demands  it;  we  refrain  from  doing  so,  not  because 
we  are  afraid,  but  because  it  would  lower  our  dignity. 
"  How  can  sin  be  sin,"  asks  one  philosopher,  "  if  through 
it  I  rise  to  spiritual  heights  before  unknown?"  Such 
are  our  mental  adjustments  to  whatever  conduct  our 
pugnacity  or  our  temptations  may  occasion,  just  as  the 
fox  rationalized  his  attitude  toward  the  grapes  by  assum- 
ing that  they  were  sour. 

Where  our  impulses  are  sufficiently  strong  and  united, 
rationalizations  play  a  small  role,  and  may  scarcely  be 
thought  of  unless  a  reason  is  demanded.  "  I  want  to  do 
this,  I  don't  need  any  reason  for  it,"  speaks  the  voice  of 
sincerity,  self-assured.  Rationalizations  play  their  spe- 
cial parts  in  justifying  an  uncertain  intention  and  in  sup- 
porting an  impulse  against  counter-impulses  that  are 


themselves  strong  enough  to  block  it.  The  more  depend- 
ent we  feel  upon  the  need  of  rationalizing  an  act,  the 
more  certainly  are  powerful  influences  in  the  personality 
opposed  to  it,  and  the  falser  the  rationalization  is  likely 
to  be.  It  is  natural  that  the  same  reasons  fail  to  move 
us  at  other  times  and  under  other  circumstances.  He 
who  tries  to  be  true  to  his  rationalizations  may  become  a 
traitor  to  himself.  He  is  like  a  man  riding  a  bicycle, 
who  inclines  his  machine  in  one  direction  when  his 
natural  leaning  is  toward  the  other.  The  test  of  char- 
acter is  the  firm  adherence  to  standards  of  action :  what 
things  must  be  done  and  what  things  are  not  to  be  done, 
and  this  in  defiance  of  the  rationalizations  that  may  be 
present  to  oppose  these  principles.  The  subtlest  tempta- 
tion to  evil  is  just  that  which  comes  disguised  as  ration- 
alization of  the  unworthy  impulse.  The  real  conflicts  of 
the  soul  are  not  between  good  and  evil,  but  between 
rationalized  .good  and  what  is  truly  right.  So  did  the 
Indian  mother  throw  her  child  into  the  Ganges,  and,  as 
a  widow,  burn  herself  on  her  husband's  pyre,  rationalizing 
these  acts  as  religious  duties ;  so  did  many  ancients  ration- 
alize the  slaughter  in  sacrifice  of  useful  animals  and  even 
of  their  fellow  men.  We  have  learned  to  realize  the  in- 
appropriateness  of  such  conduct,  though  we  still  ration- 
alize a  value  into  the  sacrifice  of  many  vital  personal 
aspirations. 

Of  course  we  apply  rationalization  not  only  to  our 
acts  but  also  to  our  opinions  and  points  of  view.  We 
manufacture  or  acquire  reasons  for  our  likes  and  dislikes, 
and  even  more  commonly  for  our  approvals  and  disap- 
provals. If  a  scientific  investigator  puts  forward  a  result 
or  a  doctrine  which  is  distasteful  to  us  personally  be- 
cause it  shows  us  in  an  unpleasant  light  to  ourselves,  or 


MENTAL  ADAPTATION  15 

because  we  secretly  feel  the  contribution  superior  to  what 
we  ourselves  could  have  made,  we  are  prejudiced  against 
the  proposal.     The  office  of  rationalization  is  to  discredit 
this  work  to  our  intellects.     Not  the  least  of  the  obstacles 
to  psychological  progress  is  that  to  be  practical  it  has 
to  be  personal,  and  in  being  so  it  encounters  a  host  of  in- 
stinctive prejudices  difficult  to  deal  with  because  so  well 
concealed  from  their  holders.     A  proper  representative/ 
of  psychological  science  must  be  able  not  only  to  tell  the! 
truth  to  his  own  disadvantage,  but  also  to  accomplish  the/ 
harder  task  of  believing  it. 

Rationalizations  of  thought  or  conduct  in  terms  of 
moral  principle  are  precisely  the  function  of  the  so-called 
"  elastic  conscience."  Religion,  indeed,  whose  purpose 
is  to  make  people  better,  may  be  made  to  rationalize 
infamous  actions.  Comprehensive  instances  are  the  tor- 
ture of  heretics,  and  the  execution  of  witches.  These 
are  the  work  of  "  cave-keeping  "  faults  of  human  nature 
which  borrowed  from  religion  the  convenient  disguise  of 
an  act  of  faith. 

In  short,  the  object  that  rationalization  serves  is  to 
provide  the  feeling  of  moral  and  logical  justification  for 
our  acts  and  thoughts,  to  supplement  our  feeling  of  their 
freedom,  and  to  keep  us  at  temporary  peace  with  our  own 
natures.  Enough  instances  have  probably  been  quoted  to 
show  that  the  ability  to  rationalize  an  act  is  a  slight 
guarantee  of  its  real  moral  or  logical  value.  Life  ii 
built  of  the  effects  we  produce,  not  of  the  motives  we 
make  believe.  ±j 

The  most  important  and  coherent  system  of  adaptive 
mental  reactions  that  humanity  has  developed  is  that  of 
religion.  The  primitive  attempts  were  simple,  as  were 
perhaps  the  minds  whose  needs  they  met :  a  conception  of 


16  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

how  the  world  arose,  of  the  interference  of  supernatural 
forces  in  the  world's  affairs,  of  some  existence  after 
death :  these  were  formulated,  and  the  mind  was  satisfied. 
Religion  has  always  served  an  important  social  purpose, 
in  giving  to  a  people  a  sense  of  solidarity,  a  faith  in  their 
common  cause,  contributing  to  victory  in  conflict.  This, 
as  Karl  Pearson  points  out,  gives  them  great  advantage 
over  people  not  bound  together  by  any  such  ties. 
Natural  selection  would  thus  develop  a  humanity  with 
some  degree  of  religious  evolution,  quite  apart  from  the 
•  supreme  value  of  religion  for  the  individual.  But  as 
individual  life  becomes  more  complex  and  fraught  with 
difficulties  more  keenly  felt,  the  mind  demands,  and  sup- 
plies, a  religion  that  will  meet  its  difficulties  in  a  more 
personal  way.  We  must  appreciate  that  there  are  two 
sorts  of  these  difficulties;  one  of  the  simple  impossi- 
bility of  realizing  the  conditions  of  normal  human  hap- 
piness, which  are  nevertheless  desired  and  striven  for; 
the  other  the  negation... of.  these.. conditions,  which  sup- 
plants them  by  abnormal  ideals.  Religion  has  its  com- 
pensation for  the  first  of  these  difficulties,  but  not  for  the 
second.  The  losing  that  is  true  dying  is  not  the  loss  of 
the  object  of  value,  but  the  loss  of  the  sense  and  impulse 
of  its  value.  The  belief  in  immortality  is  the  response 
of  the  human  mind  to  the  wish  for  further  good  things 
it  has  learned  to  know  on  earth;  for  a  continued  spend- 
ing of  our  energies,  or  a  meeting  again  with  loved  ones. 
The  individual,  though  failing  of  the  good  things  of  life 
here,  has  not  lost  the  sense  of  their  value,  but  wants  an- 
other chance  at  them.  If  one  denies  the  values  of  life, 
and  tries  to  live  it  in  ways  in  which  it  is  not  meant  to  be 
worth  living,  this  faith  loses  all  its  sustaining  power. 
Rationalizations  aside,  the  persistence  of  this  belief  be- 


MENTAL  ADAPTATION  17 

tokens  in  general  —  not  in  every  one  —  a  better  adapta- 
tion to  life  than  the  loss  of  it.  Further  stimuli  to  re- 
ligion are  the  sufferings  of  those  dear  to  us  when  we  can 
do  nothing  to  help.  Powerful  religious  impulses,  as  in 
the  form  of  prayer,  spring  up  at  such  times,  which  may 
be  quite  in  contrast  to  one's  ordinary  habits  of  thought. 
Again,  we  make  our  own  sufferings  more  tolerable;  we 
identify  them  with  a  cause  in  which  others  have  suffered 
far  more.  Are  we  not  frankly  told  that  the  Christian 
life  is  "  many  a  sorrow,  many  a  labor,  many  a  tear,"  but 
that  it  brings  ultimate  triumph,  "  sorrow  vanquished, 
labor  ended,  Jordan  passed  "  ?  What  awaits  him  "  who 
best  can  drink  his  cup  of  woe,  triumphant  over  pain  "  ? 
By  the  values  thus  gained  we  develop  the  endurance  of 
hardship,  resistance  to  temptation,  capacity  for  sacrifice 
and  for  effort  in  the  face  of  discouragement,  which  make 
religion  the  greatest  human  force  in  the  control  of  con-  .^ 
duct. 

A  large  share  of  human  happiness  depends  on  the  fit- 
ness of  sexual  adaptations;  most  of  the  wreckage  of  hu- 
man happiness  is  strewn  upon  the  reefs  with  which  hu- 
man impulses  surround  them.  The  normal  adjustment 
of  this  trend  in  a  regulated  life  is  in  marriage,  in  which 
a  man  and  a  woman  administer  a  household  and  rear 
children.  Whatever  makes  this  adaptation  easier  and 
better  is  good,  whatever  makes  it  worse  or  more  difficult 
is  bad.  Instinct  left  to  itself  regularly  takes  care  of 
itself;  but  complex  adjustments  to  the  requirements  of  a 
social  order  must  safeguard  instincts  in  the  interests  of 
these  requirements.  There  is  a  general  principle  —  a 
phase  of  the  law  of  inhibition  of  instinct  by  habit  —  that 
it  is  bad  for  any  instinct  to  adopt  partial  responses  which 
at  some  point  must  be  frustrated.  Such  response  de- 
3 


18  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

velops,  perhaps  unconsciously,  a  habit  of  stopping  short 
which  renders  more  difficult,  when  the  time  comes,  the 
completion  of  the  action.  This  law  has  its  chief  human 
application  in  the  erotic  sphere.  Thus  it  is  well  known 
that  self-indulgence  in  the  more  pronounced  reactions  of 
flirtation  may  impair  the  capacity  for  the  deeper  attach- 
ments required  in  marriage,  without  which  one  does  not 
make  in  a  whole-hearted  way  the  sacrifices  that  marriage 
involves.  There  are  bigger  fish  in  the  sea  than  ever 
were  caught,  but  one  does  not  get  big  fish  if  little  ones 
steal  the  bait.  From  the  educational  standpoint,  it  is 
wiser  to  teach  this  self-control  on  the  basis  of  health  and 
proper  care  of  oneself,  than  because  the  indulgence  has 
some  vaguely  immoral  quality.  One  refrains  from 
spending  every  night  at  the  theater,  or  from  drinking  a 
dozen  glasses  of  good  punch  at  a  reception,  and  from 
other  things  that  one  admittedly  would  thoroughly  enjoy 
doing,  when  one  realizes  that  these  indulgences  are  not 
good,  that  they  make  one  feel  less  fit  for  more  important 
things. 

It  appears  that  just  as  people  differ  decidedly  in  the 
amount  of  alcohol  that  they  can  take  with  impunity,  so 
others  are  much  more  unfavorably  affected  by  frustrated 
erotic  reactions.  If  the  problem  is  simply  one  of  elimina- 
tion, the  proper  conduct  of  life  is  relatively  definite  and 
easy.  Some  people  are  so  fortunate  that  they  step  from 
an  apparently  extreme  inhibition  of  these  reactions  to 
a  normal  adaptation  in  love  and  marriage.  But  others 
who  follow  this  course  illustrate,  to  their  cost,  that  the 
inhibition  of  instinct  by  habit,  like  other  good  rules,  is 
one  that  works  in  all  sorts  of  ways.  The  instinct  that 
leads  toward  sexual  reactions  does  not  originally  have  the 
fixed  tendency  that  it  acquires  in  normal  adult  existence, 


MENTAL  ADAPTATION  19 

but  in  earlier  years  is  exceedingly  subject  to  distortion; 
there  are  indeed  few  things  in  life  to  which  it  cannot  at- 
tach itself.  If  a  dead  wall  of  repression  is  built  across 
the  development  of  this  trend,  it  does  not  accumulate  a 
great  reservoir  of  energy  for  use  at  the  proper  time; 
rather  it  blocks  the  proper  course  of  a  trend  which  knows 
how  to  cut  many  other  channels.  It  is  important,  there- 
fore, to  have  in  life  some  positive  influences  which  will 
develop  a  healthy  type  of  sex  consciousness.  Good  per- 
sonalities do  not  avoid,  but  take  special  pleasure  in,  vari- 
ous activities  when  they  are  shared  in  mixed  company. 
The  essential  condition  of  the  healthiness  of  these  re- 
actions is  that  they  be  accompanied  by  bodily  activity, 
especially  of  large  muscle  groups.  Dancing  is  the  natural 
prototype  of  these,  if  not  their  best  example.  A  greater 
value  in  this  respect  attaches  to  more  active  things,  such 
as  tennis,  boating,  swimming,  various  forms  of  the  "  wild 
life,"  and  many  other,  in  themselves  good,  bodily  recre- 
ations in  which  men  and  women  meet  upon  terms  of  com- 
mon or  competitive  effort.  Dr.  Brill  contributes  an 
interesting  sidelight  upon  this  principle.  He  obtained 
accounts  from  many  persons  in  regard  to  the  mental 
effects  of  some  of  the  new  dances,  and  found  that  grosser 
erotic  feelings  are  more  frequently  evoked  by  watching 
them  than  by  participating  in  them  and  thus  securing  the 
outlet  of  bodily  reaction. 

Attitude  and  conduct  in  this  sphere  are  strongly  sub- 
ject to  the  influence  of  surroundings.  It  is  the  soundest 
of  observations  that  example  is  better  than  precept,  and 
precept  better  than  instruction.  In  fact,  the  strongest 
argument  against  the  so-called  campaign  of  enlighten- 
ment in  these  matters  has  been  that  mere  information  is 
of^9o  little  value  in  governing  conduct.  One  may  well 


30  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

know  wherein  healthy  character  consists,  but  the  best 
use  of  such  knowledge  is  to  keep  one  in  the  society  of 
those  of  strong  character. 

Another  consideration  applies  especially  in  environ- 
ments which  invite  the  intellectual  over-refinement  of 
erotic  feelings.  Good  personalities  react  to  this  trend 
not  merely  as  an  instrument  of  pleasure,  nor  simply  to 
meet  its  primary  biological  purpose,  but  attach  essential 
value  to  both  these  phases.  Of  the  thousand  rationaliza- 
tions of  unhappy  marriage,  every  one  may  originate 
on  a  physiological  level.  Neurosis,  alcohol  and  the 
divorce  courts  wait  on  those  who  try  to  circumvent  this 
fact. 

Where  the  adaptation  of  marriage  is  not  made,  or  is 
poorly  made,  this  may  be  ascribed  partly  to  the  nonoccur- 
rence  of  external  opportunities  for  it,  but  very  largely 
also  to  the  internal  resistances  which  are  developed  in  the 
many  ways  already  mentioned.  Though  possibilities  of 
adequate  adaptation  present  themselves,  they  go  unrecog- 
nized or  unreacted  to;  or  if  an  attempt  is  made  to  meet 
them,  it  is  so  weak  that  it  is  bound  to  fail.  In  these  cases, 
where  personal  resistances  have  played  the  important  role, 
there  results,  in  general,  a  defective  adaptation  to  life  it- 
self, with  more  or  less  well  concealed  embitterment  at  the 
failure.  To  the  absence  of  a  normal  possibility  for  ade- 
quate adjustment,  individuals  can  adapt  themselves  quite 
as  wholesomely  as  to  the  more  usual  situation,  and  thus 
live  careers  of  conspicuous  social  value.  Good  per- 
sonalities overcome  the  difficulty  by  free  recognition  and 
open  acceptance.  The  effective  means  to  such  end  is  the 
development  of  strong  external  interests  to  prevent  the 
withdrawal  into  self,  by  any  form  of  direct  service  to 
society,  by  the  pursuit  of  idealized  ambitions,  and  thus  — 


21 

like  the  ancient  Epicureans  —  by  cultivating  the  mental 
luxuries  of  life,  boldly  to  dispense  with  its  necessities. 

It  is  a  property  of  human  reactions  that  the 
originally  attaching  to  one  set  of  impressions  or  reactions 
may  hpJrnn.c/Wr^  fr>  annfhpr  tW  stnnd^  in  snmp  assncU 
atinn  wjffr  if  -  This  association  may  be  very  superficial, 
as,  when  having  much  enjoyed  a  play  at  a  certain  theater, 
one  looks  forward  with  pleasure  to  going  to  that  theater 
again,  though  the  play  and  company  are  different. 
Again,  the  association  may  be  very  obscure,  as  it  is  in 
the  symptoms  of  certain  mental  diseases.  Associations 
come  to  mean  much  more  to  us  subjectively  than  they  do 
objectively,  through  our  special  experiences  in  connec- 
tion with  them  and  our  elaborations  of  them.  This 
principle  plays  a  great  part  in  mental  adaptation.  The 
mind  can  endow  certain  thoughts  and  actions  with  an  ex- 
treme value  —  that  is,  idealize  them.  One  man  tries  to 
build  as  good  an  automobile  as  he  can;  another  tries  to 
make  himself  as  good  a  chess  player  as  possible;  another 
finds  his  ambitions  in  knowing  the  most  about  Shakes- 
peare; another  tries  to  be  the  most  skillful  bricklayer. 
Practically  anything  may  be  idealized  so  that  it  compen-  i 
sates  for  the  loss  of  all  else,  and  all  else  is  sacrificed  to 
it.  The  striking  thing  about  these  ideals  is  that  while 
some  are  of  great  value  for  one's  relation  to  the  external 
world  and  others  of  practically  none,  to  the  person  who 
holds  them  the  latter  mean  at  least  as  much  as  the  former. 
In  itself  it  means  no  more  to  the  surgeon  to  set  a  difficult 
fracture  than  it  does  to  the  Assyriologist  to  decipher  a 
neglected  cuneiform.  It  can  well  mean  less,  for  the  sur- 
geon earns  large  sums  for  repairing  injured  bodies,  while 
the  value  of  deciphering  the  inscription  depends  almost 
entirely  on  the  subjective  enthusiasm  of  the  scholar. 


22  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

Our  minds  of  themselves  give  sacredness  to  ideals,  just 
as  they  give  convincingness  to  rationalizations. 

Where  such  ideals  are  developed  simply  as  compensa- 
tions for  the  unlived-out  portions  of  the  fundamental 
trends,  they  serve  well  their  primary  purpose  of  balancing 
the  personality,  and  may,  indeed,  play  an  important  part 
in  enabling  the  trends  to  be  better  lived  out.  The  painter's 
devotion  to  his  art  may  be  of  conspicuous  economic  value 
to  him  and  his  family.  Certain  influences  of  rationaliza- 
tion and  environment  may  distort  the  ideals  so  that  they 
have  no  correspondence  with  the  main  trends  of  the  per- 
sonality. An  adequate  meeting  of  the  fundamental 
trends  requires  of  the  individual  some  degree  of  self- 
assertion  to  the  external  world.  Active  competition  for 
the  means  of  meeting  these  trends  is  an  essential  part  of 
getting  them,  which  makes  definite  demands  upon  mate- 
rial effort  —  willingness  to  act  in  the  service  of  others, 
aggressiveness  against  the  opposed  will  of  others.  The 
things  that  can  be  idealized  differ  widely  in  the  demands 
that  they  make.  Those  of  the  political  and  industrial 
worlds  are  great,  those  of  the  intellectual  and  aesthetic 
worlds  are  relatively  small.  Rationalization  comes  to  the 
aid  of  these  latter,  to  help  those  personalities  "  who  in- 
stinctively crave  a  refuge  from  the  domineering,  refus- 
ing, and  wheedling  of  social  enterprises  in  general,"  to 
find  that  refuge  in  the  more  passive  ideals  of  this  type. 
The  most  extreme  ideals  may  thus  be  formed  in  direc- 
tions  that  have  no  expression  in  action,  face  no  test  of 
concrete  experience,  and  whose  only  satisfaction  is  self- 
satisfaction.  There  are  many  people  whose  entire  happi- 
ness is  bought  with  just  such  illusions. 

A  fox,  being  forced  to  content  himself  with  sour 
grapes,  fervently  declared  they  were  the  best  grapes  he 


MENTAL  ADAPTATION  23 

ever  ate.  But  it  would  be  a  sorry  proceeding  to  feed 
them  to  the  little  foxes,  and  teach  them  that  there  were 
no  better  things  in  the  world  to  eat.  That  education  is 
a  traitor  to  society  which  teaches  or  allows  it  to  be  thought 
that  the  ultimate  values  of  life  lie  in  directions  that  tend 
toward  satisfaction  in  self  and  away  from  meeting  the 
objective  fundamental  trends  of  the  larger  personality. 
Subjective  ideals  may  be  a  fair  substitute  for  reality,  but 
they  are  a  bad  preparation  for  it.  Honest  people  are  free 
to  assert  that  a  million  dollars  is  a  good  thing  to  have, 
and  that  if  money  becomes  sordid  and  belittles  char- 
acter, it  is  the  fault  of  the  possessor  and  not  that  of  the 
million  dollars.  But  suppose  that  at  the  hands  of  poor 
and  dishonest  mentors  one  had  been  led  to  think  seriously 
of  all  money  as  filthy  lucre,  the  root  of  all  evil,  a  topic  to 
be  mentioned  only  in  suppressed  whispers,  and  with 
guilty  laughter,  a  motive  whose  acknowledgment  was  a 
confession  of  turpitude,  what  would  be  likely  to  happen 
when  one's  ambitions  came  to  depend  upon  his  economic 
competence,  or  if  one  had  a  good  chance  to  win  the  mil- 
lion dollars  or  something  worth  a  great  deal  more? 
Would  one  so  educated  and  convinced  have  a  firm  grasp 
on  his  opportunity?  Would  he  make  a  sound  investment 
of  his  fortune?  Would  he  be  likely  to  spend  the  income 
from  it  wisely?  It  is  particularly  important  that  those 
who  are  responsible  for  the  formation  of  character  in 
others  should  withstand  every  impulse  to  dissemble  per- 
sonal difficulties  or  mistakes  of  adaptation,  and  should 
openly  appreciate  the  active,  tangible  and  concretely  serv- 
iceable ideals  that  are  likely  to  bring  the  best  adjustments 
to  life  in  the  normal  personalities  under  their  influence. 
The  course  to  an  adgquate  menta.1  adaptation  is  some- 
times Stormy,  but  it  is  far  leffS  devious  th^n  the  paths  hy 


MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

Its  comprehensive 
expression  is  the  feeling  of  being  an  influence  for  good. 
It  will  be  most  potent  where  its  results  are  the  most 
clearly  seen,  and  are  the  nearest  to  one's  deeper  impulses. 
This  is  implicit  in  the  erotic  trends.  The  quest  of  mate- 
rial possessions,  which  is  the  human  equivalent  of  the 
animal's  search  for  food,  is  again  most  valuable  where 
those  possessions  are  made  a  means  of  service;  and  the 
same  is  true  of  the  entire  group  of  processes  that  dynamic 
psychology  sums  up  under  the  head  of  "  balancing  mate- 
rial." It  is  sometimes  thought  that  the  entire  concept 
of  effectiveness  for  good  in  others  has  its  supreme  value 
for  human  adaptation  precisely  because  of  analogies, 
more  or  less  remote,  to  fundamental  trends  of  love. 

Most  principles  of  mental  adaptation  founded  on  hu- 
man experience  will  have  more  fruitful  results  the  earlier 
in  the  life  of  the  individual  they  can  be  brought  to  bear. 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  remarked  that  the  education  of 
a  man  should  begin  with  his  grandfather;  eugenics  has 
become  a  catchword ;  and  the  supremacy  of  heredity  will 
always  be  a  favored  belief  with  those  who  must  make  of 
fatalism  a  rationalization  for  do-nothingness.  But  there 
is  a  better  practical  prospect  of  getting  people  to  do  the 
best  for  children  that  they  have,  than  for  guiding  the 
larger  actions  that  may  result  in  having  children  to  edu- 
cate. 

The  worst  effects  of  bad  heredity  often  come  from  the 
fact  that  it  also  means  a  bad  home  environment  for  the 
child.  The  hand  that  rocks  the  cradle  can  also  plant 
the  seeds  of  failure  and  neurosis.  They  do  not  neces- 
sarily spring  from  a  bad  heredity,  and  they  may  come 
upon  a  good  heredity,  under  a  bad  environment. 

We  may  assume  that  no  parents  would  knowingly  in- 


MENTAL  ADAPTATION  25 

jure  the  mental  health  of  their  children;  yet  there  is  a 
singular  blindness  in  this  respect,  that  is  more  than  mere 
lack  of  judgment.  The  parents  who  spoil  their  child  do 
so  in  feeding  their  own  self -admiration  as  parents  of  that 
child.  If  unbounded  affection  for  the  child  often  results 
in  such  harm  to  him,  it  is  because  his  adaptation  to  life  is 
not  the  underlying  motive  of  the  affection  of  his  parents, 
to  whom  he  is  essentially  an  instrument  for  the  living  out 
of  a  particular  group  of  feelings.  They  betray  him  to 
their  own  self-love. 

One  may  truly  respect  a  boy  of  six,  who,  when  asked 
by  his  grandmother  whether  he  was  not  sorry  that  she 
had  hurt  her  foot,  replied  that  he  had  tried  to  be,  but 
couldn't.  There  is  no  easier  way  to  damage  a  child's 
character  than  by  artificially  stimulating  his  emotions.  It 
is  an  evil  turn  to  a  child,  and  an  all  too  frequent  one,  to 
teach  or  allow  him  to  lash  himself  into  emotion  because 
it  appears  to  be  the  "  right  way  to  feel."  If  we  try  to  act 
as  we  feel,  we  are  very  apt  to  act  only  as  we  think  we 
should  like  to  feel ;  it  is  more  honest  to  judge  our  feelings 
by  our  reactions. 

The  emotional  display  of  sympathy,  in  particular,  is  a 
thing  that  is  blessed  neither  to  give  nor  to  receive.  Those  j 

Who    ridiC"1**   ™1r    ciifo»ri'ngc    yirn    ^n^nf    fninnrlr    fr>    Vg    {hPTI   I 

those  who  merely  pjty  them  The  underlying  cause  of 
such  displays  is  that  it  is  easier  to  cry  over  our  friend's 
hurt  than  to  mend  it;  sympathy  may  injure  the  recipient 
by  undermining  his  self-control,  and  by  leading  him  to 
exaggerate  his  difficulties.  Though  such  conduct  is  hard 
in  the  case  of  those  personally  dear  to  us,  it  is  best  to  con- 
fine one's  appreciation  of  another's  suffering,  so  far  as  is 
humanly  possible,  to  doing  something  objective  to 
lighten  it. 


26  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

Just  as  that  education  is  of  little  value  which  merely 
teaches  what  without  showing  how,  so,  in  the  breaking 
up  of  harmful  tendencies,  the  value  of  education  consists, 
not  in  showing  what  not  to  do,  but  in  how  not  to  do  it. 
If  a  drinker  is  really  to  give  up  alcohol,  he  must  not  con- 
tent himself  with  a  great  show  of  repentance,  resolution, 
and  pledges,  so  making  a  frontal  attack  with  his  weakened 
will  upon  the  strongest  temptation  his  character  knows. 
He  must  make  an  honest  study  of  his  failing,  observe  the 
conditions,  the  situations,  the  personal  associations  under 
which  he  tends  to  yield,  and  strive  in  every  way  to  so 
order  his  life  that  he  will  not  be  subjected  to  those  condi- 
tions; he  may  thus  outflank  his  enemy,  and  take  him  in 
the  rear,  where  he  is  least  prepared  for  attack.  The 
^ost_ejfective_ancl.ihe  most  .sijaeere  way  to  get  rid  of  any 
undesirable  reaction  is  to  remove  the  stimulus. 

The  ideal  education  should  be  guided  by  the  motto, 
"  not  things  to  know,  but  things  to  do."  Let  there  be 
an  irreducible  minimum  of  precept  that  is  not  put  to  the 
test  of  immediate  action.  The  opportunity  of  the  early 
years  to  develop  motor  accomplishments  that  are  of 
proved  value  in  subsequent  life  should  be  developed  to  the 
full.  The  available  forms  of  manual  training  have  a 
high  place  in  such  education.  Every  boy  should  be  pro- 
vided with  some  physical  attainment  of  the  combative 
type,  as  a  discipline  for  temper,  and  against  whatever 
situations  may  demand  from  him  the  courage  of  hostile 
strength.  Swimming  is  to  be  valued  not  simply  through 
its  value  for  self-preservation,  but  for  the  discipline  of 
the  reflexes  that  it  tests  and  develops.  Dancing  should 
also  have  an  unquestioned  place  for  the  development  of 
the  incidental  social  graces,  and  to  pave  the  way  for  the 
growth  of  a  healthy  sex-consciousness  later  on.  All  these 


MENTAL  ADAPTATION  *7 

are  quite  as  fundamental  as  any  phase  of  book  learning. 

The  healthier  the  household,  the  healthier  the  stand- 
ards of  conduct  that  are  likely  to  develop  naturally.  But 
the  individual  cannot  know  enough  of  life  to  direct  him- 
self intelligently  for  his  adaptations  to  it  in  the  times 
when  the  formation  and  training  of  those  adaptations 
must  take  place.  This  is  the  responsibility  of  those  who 
are  going  before.  They  must  see  to  it  that  the  actuali- 
ties of  life  burn  out  all  tendencies,  however  disguised,  tc 
the  self-love  and  self -consciousness  —  different  names  for 
the  same  fundamental  thing  —  which  are  the  great  f oun- 
tainhead  of  mental  maladaptations.  They  must  hold  the 
earlier  years  firmly  to  the  satisfaction  of  concrete  en- 
deavor, of  external  result,  and  train  these  years  to  strive 
in  their  life  work  for  none  but  those  constructive  ideals 
and  values  of  which  older  experience  —  be  it  that  of  suc- 
cess or  failure  —  has  brought  the  understanding.  Great 
mistakes  are  still  retrieved  by  keeping  others  from  mak- 
ing them;  and  great  triumphs  perfected  by  spurring 
others  beyond  them. 

The  desire  of  Jupiter  for  the  nymph,  Thetis,  was  dis- 
pelled by  the  knowledge  that  she  should  bear  a  son  who 
should  surpass  his  father.  Better  men  than  Jupiter  are 
needed  to  fulfill  such  a  prophecy;  and  no  good  man  or 
woman  might  ask  more  from  life  than  what  this  ruler 
of  Olympus  feared :  to  rear  children  who  shall  be  better 
than  they. 


CHAPTER  II 

USE   AND   WASTE   IN    THOUGHT   AND   CONDUCT 

LIVING  things  are  complicated  structures  that  absorb, 
convert  and  expend  energy.  Human  beings  are  the  most 
complicated  of  them  all.  A  helpful  likeness  is  to  those 
machines  which  make  electrical  energy  out  of  that  pro- 
duced by  falling  water.  Just  as  different  streams  con- 
tribute to  make  the  river  by  whose  fall  the  electric  tur- 
bines are  driven,  so  do  we  derive  our  bodily  energies  from 
different  sources,  such  as  air,  and  various  kinds  of  food. 
When  electricity  is  made  in  the  dynamo,  it  is  carried 
away  for  the  performance  of  a  great  many  tasks;  light- 
ing, moving  cars,  power  for  manufacturing.  Similarly, 
when  our  sources  of  energy  have  been  assimilated  into  the 
blood  stream,  it  carries  their  energy  to  different  organs 
which  perform  different  parts  of  the  work  by  which  we 
live.  Some  of  it  supplies  our  muscles,  and  we  carry  out 
motions.  Some  of  it  goes  to  internal  glands  which  make 
special  chemical  substances  for  the  body.  Some  of  it 
operates  the  processes  of  digestion.  Life  is  the  continual 
conversion  of  energy  derived  in  these  ways,  just  as  the 
dynamo  converts  into  electrical  power  the  force  derived 
from  the  fall  of  the  water. 

The  energy  of  the  dynamo  is  not  dissipated,  but  com- 
mitted to  the  performance  of  definite  tasks  by  the  wires 
that  conduct  it.  We  do  not  use  electrical  energy  as  such, 
but  for  lighting  lamps  and  the  like.  In  the  same  way, 

28 


USE  AND  WASTE  29 

we  do  not  spend  our  vital  energy  as  such,  in  an  inchoate, 
unorganized  manner.  We  spend  it  through  certain  chan- 
nels,  into  any  one  of  which  may  flow  energy  from  the 
great  common  reservoir,  it  may  be  part  of  an  organ- 
ism s  behavior  to  turn  toward  a  source  of  light,  to  lie  in 
wait  for  prey,  to  show  interest  in  mathematics.  Thus 
the  primordial  vital  energy  is  differentiated.  Any  such 
differentiation  of  an  organism's  vital  energy  we  shall,  in 
this  book,  speak  of  as  a  trend.  A  trend  is  a  specialized 
portion  of  vital  energy,  just  as  an  organ  is  the  name  for 
a  specialized  portion  of  vital  tissue.^ 

Nietzsche  remarked  that  this  conversion  and  expendi- 
ture of  energy  is  itself  the  prime  fact  of  life.  To  him  the 
adaptation  of  that  energy  for  the  benefit  of  the  living 
creature  is  an  incidental  matter.  But,  if  the  energy  de- 
rived from  our  dynamo  were  spent  in  such  ways  as 
lighting  little  Geissler  tubes  or  operating  toy  motors,  or 
run  through  meaningless  coils  of  resistance  wire,  people 
would  not  pay  for  the  operation  of  the  plant,  and  it  would 
be  abandoned.  And  so,  while  the  expenditure  of  our 
energies  in  any  sort  of  way  may  meet  the  definition  of 
life,  yet,  if  we  are  to  go  on  living,  we  must  spend  it  in 
ways  that  are  beneficial  to  us  in  our  surroundings.  The 
dynamo  must  operate  the  community's  lights,  street  cars 
and  factories.  We  must  breathe,  eat,  drink,  work  for  a 
living. 

Organisms  that  do  not  act  properly  in  these  respects 
perish  in  the  course  of  evolution.  We  all,  therefore, 
have  tendencies  to  act  in  certain  similar  ways.  We_all 
seek  air,  food,  drink,  sexual  partners.  Common  tenden- 
cies like  tliese  have  been  spoken  of  as  fundamental  tr^pd*. 
We  know  that  tendencies  to  act  in  these  ways  need  not 
be  learned,  but  are  inherited  from  long  lines  of  ancestors 


80  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

who  themselves  employed  them  to  their  survival.  There 
are  different  names  for  different  kinds  of  such  trends, 
or  "  bejiaj^or-pattej.fls."  as  they  may  be  called.  When 
Paramecium  turns  away  from  a  bit  of  salt,  the  action 
is  called  (negative)  trgpism.  When  the  hedgehog  curls 
up  at  the  approach  of  danger,  the  action  is  called  an 
instinct.  When  the  leg  muscle  contracts  on  the  tapping 
of  the  kneecap,  the  action  is  called  a  reflex.  Precise  lines 
between  them  are  difficult  to  draw,1  and  the  distinc- 
tions would  not  greatly  help  us.  Three  points  are  to  be 
noted:  first,  that  life  is  a  conversiofl  aqd  expenditure  of 
energy ;  second,  that  this  energy  is  expended  in  specialized 
definable  ways;  third,  that  these  ways  are,  and  in  the 
nature  of  things  must  be,  very  largely  of  sucl^  fl  foyacter 
as  to  be  of  use  to  the  organism  in  the  struggle  for 
existenge. 

Since  the  animal  needs  food,  it  develops  and  preserves 
patterns  of  behavior  that  result  in  its  obtaining  food. 
The  spider  spins  a  web,  the  man  works  for  a  wage. 
Since  the  individual  organism  has  only  a  limited  span  of 
existence,  only  those  organisms  can  continue  which  make 
use  of  reproductive  functions;  hence,  the  sexual  trends. 
One  organism  may  seek  to  deprive  another  of  food,  or  of 
sexual  partnership;  hence,  the__fighting_ ^_£qmjbajtive 
trends.  Stronger  organisms  may  seek  to  destroy  another 
for  their  own  food;  hence  the_  trejids_of  flight  and  qon- 
cealment.  Greater  good  to  individual  organisms  results 
if  they  combine  for  the  common  weal;  hence Jthe  social, 
cooperative  trends  that  we  see  so  highly  developed  in 
bees,  ants,  and  men.  Creatures  that  behaved  in  accord- 
ance with  these  relations  survived ;  others  perished. 
•  Trends  that  lead  thus  directly  to  the  advantage  of  the 

lCf.  von  Bechterew,  "Objective  Psychologie,"  20. 


USE  AND  WASTE  31 

individual  and  the  species  surely  need  no  other  explana- 
tion than  this.  They  arise  and  persist  because  they  are 
necessary.  The  question  is  not  so  much  why  we  act  in 
accord  with  fundamental  trends,  as  why  we  should  ever 
act  differently.  How  is  it  that  sometimes  the  behavior 
of  an  organism  does  not  serve  its  "will  to  live"?  Is 
the  guiding  force  of  heredity,  selection  and  evolution 
sometimes  inefficient,  or  sometimes  suspended  so  that  we 
no  longer  live  according  to  it  ?  And  in  these  cases,  is  the 
behavior  simply  an  inchoate  dissipation  of  vital  energy 
escaped  from  the  channels  that  should  control  it?  Or 
does  such  behavior  have  special  properties  of  its  own? 
In  a  word,  what  are  the  general  sources  and  character-  * 
istics  of  faulty  adaptations  ? 

Apart  from  the  human  species,  the  main  cause  of  faulty  | 
adaptations  does  not  lie  in  the  failure  of  the  instincts  or»> 
behavior-patterns  as  such.     Faulty  adaptation  results  be- 
cause the  external  situation  is  an  exceptional  one.     The 
instincts  with  which  the  animal  is  racially  endowed  pro- 
vide no  proper  response  to  it.     The  energy  from  the 
dynamo  is  thrown  through  the  accustomed  motor,  prop- 
erly wired.     But  the  motor  is  now  connected  to  different 
machinery,  or  improperly  connected  with  the  machinery 
which  it  is  designed  to  operate.     Gears  are  jammed,  or 
there  is  an  obstruction  among  the  moving  parts.     The  ^ 
operation  is  ineffectual,  or  even  destructive. 

The  dodos  of  the  Mauritius  had  no  instinct  for  flight ; 
hence  they  were  promptly  exterminated  by  the  men,  to 
whom  they  were  unaccustomed.  It  is  perfectly  correct 
conduct  for  the  pickerel  to  chase  a  small  bright  object 
flashing  through  the  water,  because  as  a  rule  it  is  a  little 
fish,  good  for  food.  Only  exceptionally  is  it  a  trolling 
spoon.  In  these  cases  we  have  a  great  change  in  the  sit- 


32  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

uation  confronting  the  animals,  which  takes  place  more 
quickly  than  their  instincts  can  meet  it  by  evolution. 
Either  issue  means  death  to  the  individuals  concerned. 
Yet  it  is  not,  so  to  speak,  the  animal's  "  fault " ;  the  ani- 
mal is  acting  in  strict  accordance  with  behavior-patterns 
whose  fitness  was  demonstrated  by  the  whole  experience 
of  its  race.  So  might  a  horde  of  savages  rush  to  death 
against  the  hail  of  machine  guns. 

The  reaction  may  not  be  harmful,  but  simply  one  which 
the  changed  conditions  have  rendered  superfluous  for  the 
fundamental  trend  it  served.  A  well  fed  house  cat  will 
continue  to  watch  for  mice,  and  the  sportsman  does  not 
kill  game  for  the  need  of  food.  Such  reactions  cannot, 
strictly  speaking,  be  called  "  faulty."  Those  of  the 
sportsman  serve  another  important  trend  —  the  preserva- 
tion of  physicaj_vigor. 

When  the  spider  consumes  the  fly  it  has  caught,  that 
represents  the  final  and  direct  issue  of  a  fundamental 
trend.  But,  that  this  end  may  be  reached,  preliminary 
steps  are  necessary.  The  fly,  having  been  caught  in  the 
net,  must  be  wrapped ;  the  net  must  first  be  spun  to  catch 
the  fly.  The  spinning  of  the  net  is  some  steps  removed 
from  the  satisfaction  of  the  need  for  something  to  eat. 
Now,  the  spider  will  not  eat  an  imaginary  fly  if  no  fly 
is  there,  but  it  will  spin  a  web  where  no  fly  can  possibly 
come.  The  more  of  these  preliminary  steps  there  are, 
the  greater  the  possibility  that  some  of  the  more  remote 
ones  will  be  unadapted  to  the  given  situation.  Thus,  the 
whole  trend  may  be  improperly  met,  for  the  spider  would 
not  then  catch  the  fly.  In  the  human  race,  the  time  and 
energy  spent  in  the  direct  approach  to  organic  satisfac- 
tions is,  indeed,  insignificant  in  comparison  with  the  re- 
mote approaches.  A  man  refrains  from  alcohol  that  he 


USE  AND  WASTE  33 

may  do  better  work,  so  that  he  may  earn  more  money, 
which  will  enable  him  to  marry,  that  he  may  rear  chil- 
dren.    And  if  there  be  many  a  slip  twixt  the  cup  and 
the  lip,  there  will  be  many  more  between  the  pay  envelope 
and  the  cradle  of  a  descendant.     A  subsidiary  factor  in  /,  ^  , 
making  a  reaction  faulty  is  thus  the  remoteness  of  the  ji 
reaction  from  the  final  satisfaction  of  its  trend. 

It  is  possible  thus  to  understand  a  certain  amount  of 
unadapted  human  behavior.  In  days  when  contests  be- 
tween men  depended  more  upon  simple  bodily  strength 
than  is  now  the  case,  anger  was  useful  because  it  made 
the  strength  discharge  more  vigorously.  It  has  small 
value  when  it  must  be  restricted  to  such  externally  use- 
less reactions  as  clenching  the  fists  and  teeth;  yet  it  per-  £f 
sists.  These  j;eactions^iised_  to  be_  good  _f or  the  individ- 
ual, but  are  now  bad,  because  time  and  circumstance  have 
changed,  t  Don  Quixote  is  a  psychopath  because  his  be- 
havior is  adapted  only  to  an  age  gone  byj 

In  sum,  when  we  see  an  unadapted  reaction  among  the 
lower  animals,  it  generally  represents  one  that  has  been 
useful  on  other  occasions,  which  the  animal  is  not  able  to 
distinguish  from  the  present  one.  Such  a  reaction  is 
still  an  attempt  to  meet  the  situation  in  accordance  with 
the  will  to  live.  Though  misdirected  and  ineffectual,  it 
is  yet  a  true  part  of  the  struggle  for  existence.  If  the 
animal  fails,  it  is  simply  because  its  energies  and  the 
trends  in  which  they  are  directed,  though  normal,  were 
not  such  as  enabled  it  to  meet  that  situation.  Thus  it 
was  not  the  aptest  of  similes  when  the  novelist  com- 
pared the  weakness  of  one  of  his  characters  to  the  "  tro- 
pism  of  a  medusa  or  plant."  The  desire  of  those  organ- 
isms is  unswerving;  they  have  no  doubts,  fears,  or  scru- 
ples; it  is  their  external  force  which  is  slow,  feeble,  or 
4 


34  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

blind.     Never  was  lover  more  constant  to  his  lady  than 
Paramecium  to  H2CO3. 

Thus  the  first  great  factor  in  maladjustment  is  the  lack 
of  adaptation  to  altered  conditions.  It  is  naturally  one 
that  operates  most  among  animals  dependent  upon  their 
instincts,  whose  behavior  is  not  readily  modifiable.  By 
definition  we  should  expect  less  of  it  among  men,  for, 
\  intelligence  means  precisely  the  property  of  so  recom- 
bining  our  behavior-patterns  as  to  act  better  in  novel  sit- 
uations. 

Among  the  higher  animals,  however,  there  are  already 
indications  that  the  altered  situation  may  not  tell  the 
whole  story  of  unadapted  behavior.  The  conventional 
dog,  when  his  master  dies,  refuses  food,  and  will  not 
leave  the  grave,  even  starving  himself  to  death.  If  we 
examined  the  dog's  digestive  tract,  we  should  probably 
find  that  under  the  emotion  it  was  not  functioning  prop- 
erly, and  was  not  in  a  position  to  assimilate  food.  But 
there  is  no  strange  factor  in  the  surroundings  to  prevent 
the  taking  of  food.  There  was  never  a  time  in  the  his- 
tory of  dogs  when  it  was  bad  for  them  to  take  food  on 
the  death  of  a  master.  This  seems  wholly  unbiological 
conduct,  perhaps  the  first  instance  of  its  kind  that  we 
meet  as  we  ascend  the  scale  of  evolution.  It  is  now  an 
internal  difficulty  that  prevents  the  eating.  There  is  now 
another  trend,  an  emotional  one,  which  prevents  the  feed- 
ing instinct  from  expressing  itself  in  action. 

When  one  trend  thus  opposes  another,  there  ensues  a 
second  great  source  of  maladjustment  of  the  reaction, 
which  is  spoken  of  as  a  mental  conflict. 

A  man  can  meet  complex  and  unfamiliar  situations 
better  than  a  lower  animal  can,  because  he  has  a  greater 
variety  of  trends  and  behavior-patterns  which  he  can 


USE  AND  WASTE  35 

bring  to  bear  upon  them.  He  is  not  bound  by  the  in- 
stincts which  make  the  ant  so  perfect  in  its  place  and  so 
helpless  outside  of  it.  But  this  greater  number  of  trends 
makes  possible  an  interference  of  one  with  another  in 
more  ways  than  is  the  case  with  the  few  behavior-pat- 
terns of  a  lower  animal.  A  dog  has  but  to  eat  the  food 
which  is  given  him,  defend  himself  or  his  possessions 
if  they  are  physically  threatened,  and  multiply  his  kind 
if  the  occasion  is  presented.  No  one  of  his  trends  is 
likely  to  cause  a  more  than  momentary  interference  with 
another  of  them.  A  man,  on  the  other  hand,  must  go 
through  a  long  period  of  learning  artificial  principles  of 
conduct  to  which  he  must  conform.  He  must  bring  into 
conformity  with  these  his  means  of  getting  food,  shelter, 
love,  offspring.  He  must  strike  a  balance  between  his 
fondness  for  ease  and  his  ambition  for  advancement. 
He  must  make  a  choice  of  sexual  partners  that  will  be 
decided  enough  to  force  its  attainment  against  all  ob- 
stacles or  rivals.  He  must  make  permanent  sacrifices  of 
an  independence  he  ardently  desires. 

Personal  ambition  often  runs  counter  to  love,  honesty 
to  desire  for  money,  etc.  A  fundamental  trend,  like  that 
of  sexuality,  may  not  be  lived  out  because  another  trend 
of  the  personality  is  strong  enough  to  block  it,  or  because 
no  choice  of  a  partner  is  sufficiently  decisive.  Then  a 
faulty  adjustment  to  life  results  through  mental  conflict. 
Similarly,  the  dynamo  of  our  illustration  must  serve  the 
different  trends  of  the  community's  interest  —  light,  trac- 
tion, manufacture.  The  portions  of  energy  devoted  to 
these  several  uses  must  be  insulated,  one  from  the  other. 
If  wires  cross,  the  system  will  fail. 

The  Southern  boy  in  "  The  Perfect  Tribute,"  rushing 
along  the  street,  collides  with  President  Lincoln.  "  Do 


36 

you  want  all  of  the  public  highway?"  he  exclaims. 
"  Can't  a  gentleman  from  the  South  even  walk  in  the 
street  without  —  without  .  .  ."  "  My  boy,"  replies  the 
President,  "  the  fellow  that's  interfering  with  your  walk- 
ing is  down  inside  of  you."  Thus  the  in^exm}  character 
of  the  difficulty  may  least  of  all  be  appreciated  by  the 
one  subject  to  it.  Even  the  dispassionate  observer  can 
more  easily  surmise  the  existence  of  mental  conflict  than 
know  the  trends  that  are  parties  to  it.  The  conflict  may 
be  manifested  simply  in  the  failure  to  live  out  a  normal 
trend  in  the  individual's  character,  in  the  presence  of  the 
usual  opportunities  for  doing  so.  The  great  majority 
of  those  who  do  not  marry  are  simply  those  in  whom  the 
trends  that  lead  to  marriage  are  weakest  in  proportion 
to  the  trends  that  oppose  it.  Divided  love  is  weak  love, 
and  weak  love  is  the  only  hopeless  love.  We  can  see  the 
failure  of  the  fundamental  trend :  social  failure,  sexual 
failure,  economic  failure.  But  as  the  boy  did  not  see 
what  prevented  him  from  walking,  so  we  can  seldom  see 
at  once  the  things  that  beget  failure.  From  whatever 
source  they  may  come,  such  vague  counter-trends  that 
conflict  with  or  block  normal  trends  of  the  personality 
^'are  called  resistances.  A  miser  has  resistances  to  the 

•  '«—   '  '  ^~^*^t 

normal  expenditure  of  money;  a  prude  has  great  sexual 
resistances. 

It  is  plain  that  not  all  our  trends  are  equally  blocked  by 
such  resistances.  No  one  questions  the  wisdom  or  moral 
propriety  of  breathing,  or  drinking  when  one  is  thirsty. 
These  activities  are  altogether  too  necessary.  Resist- 
ances begin  to  appear  in  other  trends,  where  the  response 
is  less  immediately  urgent  and  definite.  Consider,  for 
example,  the  taking  of  food.  Ellis  points  out  that  in 
some  savage  tribes  the  dominant  "  complex  "  of  modesty 


USE  AND  WASTE  37 

centers  not  about  the  sexual  trends,  but  about  those  con- 
nected with  eating.  We  are  told  that  the  Bakairi  of  Cen- 
tral Brazil  have  no  shame  about  nakedness,  but  are 
ashamed  to  eat  in  public;  they  hung  their  heads  in  con- 
fusion when  they  saw  the  explorer  (Von  den  Steinen) 
innocently  eating.  Traces  of  this  are  not  wanting  in  civ- 
ilized experience.  We  are  accustomed  to  take  our  food 
in  groups,  at  certain  times,  and  in  certain  regulated  ways. 
Most  people  would  feel  considerable  resistance  to  munch- 
ing the  homemade  sandwich  in  a  well  filled  Pullman  car. 
This  would  be  greatly  lessened  if  a  companion  were  join- 
ing in  the  indulgence,  and  would  disappear  entirely  if  the 
remaining  passengers  did  so,  or  the  hunger  were  urgent. 
And  as  the  dog  refuses  to  eat  at  the  death  of  his  mas- 
ter, so  do  human  beings  observe  ritual  fasts  of  a  cognate 
but  more  complex  order. 

The  economic  trend,  for  amassing  as  much  of  this 
world's  goods  as  may  be,  is  blocked  by  two  external  fac- 
tors. These  are  the  competition  of  rivals,  and  the  legal 
restrictions  imposed  by  the  community.  On  the  other 
hand,  a  man's  business  may  not  grow  because  he  refuses 
to  take  the  advantages  used  by  his  unscrupulous  rivals,  or 
because  he  lacks  their  aggressiveness. 

And  so  we  find  that  the  sexual  trend,  that  which  means 
less  to  individual  existence  than  air  or  food,  indeed 
largely  restricts  its  freedom,  is  the  one  about  which  the 
greatest  resistances  have  arisen.  Its  internal  conflicts 
are,  on  the  whole,  greater  than  the  external  difficulties 
besetting  it  The  role  of  these  conflicts  in  mental  mal- 
acKpfatTons  is  more  striking  flfafl  foe  conflict^  in  other 
trends.  This  is  certainly  not  because  of  the  greater 
strength  or  urgency  of  the  need.  The  needs  for  air, 
food  and  water  make  far  more  coercive  demands  upon 


38  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

our  conduct.  It  is  because,  in  proportion  to  the  strength 
o^th^jieedj^liere  isjnucb,  more  difficulty  in  meeting  it. 
BuTtms  difficulty  is  not  external.  It  is  the  same  as  ap- 
plies to  Lincoln's  pedestrian  encounter.  We  see  the  ex- 
ternal, organic  satisfactions  readily  obtained  by  those  not 
inhibited  by  inner  influences  to  which  we  give  such  names 
^as  conscience,  modesty  or  fear.  The  actual  blocking 
&  trends  are  usually  more  instinctive  and  less  near  the  sur- 
face ;  they  are  raticwnliffed,  that  is,  made  explicit  and  de- 
fensible,  by  giving  them  the  names  of  conscience,  and  the 
like. 

In  the  first  instance,  human  love  is  not  an  elementary 
instinct  for  the  sexual  embrace,  as  hunger  is  an  instinct 
for  eating,  or  thirst  an  instinct  for  drinking.  Love  must 
meet  a  desire  for  reproduction,  a  desire  for  sensory 
pleasure,  a  desire  for  companionship,  a  desire  for  mas- 
tery, a  desire  for  self-submission,  in  many  cases  a  need 
for  aptness  in  domestic  accomplishments.  A  man  may 
be  attracted  by  a  woman's  beauty  and  repelled  by  her 
manners.  A  woman  may  find  a  man's  courage  admirable 
and  his  coarseness  disgusting.  It  may  thus  be  impossible 
to  gratify  one  trend  of  love  without  sacrificing  another. 

The  need  of  air  is  a  constant  instinct  for  inhaling  gas 
of  a  certain  sort.  Things  one  likes  to  eat  change  more 
or  less,  but  the  changes  are  generally  not  hard  to  meet, 
nor  very  great.  The  sexual  trends  readily  and  greatly 
change  their  direction,  and  the  change  is  not  so  easy  to 
meet  as  when  it  occurs  in  the  other  trends.  What  at- 
tracts on  the  dancing  floor,  in  the  drawing-room,  at  the 
supper  table,  may  disgust  on  the  tennis  court,  in  the 
kitchen,  at  the  breakfast  table.  One  may  have  different 
food  on  the  table,  but  not  so  easily  a  different  person  at 
the  opposite  end  of  it.  Different  qualities  also  attract  or 


USE  AND  WASTE  39 

repel  men  and  women  according  to  their  stage  of  devel- 
opment. The  same  qualities  do  not  command  admiration 
at  fourteen,  eighteen,  twenty-five  and  thirty-five.  Differ- 
ent solutions  of  life's  reactions  are  accepted  at  these  peri- 
ods. Foods  and  climate  may  not  be  present  in  greater 
variety  than  possible  sexual  partners,  but  they  are  more 
easily  changed. 

Thus  there  appear  three  classes  of  reasons  why  sexual ,  on 
trends  are  especially  involved  in  internal  conflicts:  first, 
they  are  less  immediately  concerpf^  witfr  thf  r"*y"dirrg  :  '- 

n'tlief  fi^pclamental  trends:  second,  tlje  Q 
proper  satisfaction  of  sexual  trends  involves  an  especial 
range  of  aims  which  may  be  inconsistent  with  one  an-    - 
other ;  third,  these  aims  are  unusually  shifting  and  sub- 
jcct  to  developmental  change. 

These  are  some  of  the  ways  in  which  conflict  blocks 
the  normal  trends  of  the  organism.  The  immediate  re- 
sult of  the  blocking  is  that  the  trend  is  not  lived  out,  and 
some  organic  need  is  not  met.  The  consequences  —  the 
ways  in  which  the  organism  seeks  to  adapt  itself  to  the 
failure  —  must  be  left  for  later  consideration. 

A  spider,  from  which  one  fly  has  escaped,  does  not 
tear  the  new  web  to  pieces,  but  waits  patiently  for  an- 
other fly.  The  angler,  from  whom  a  fish  has  escaped, 
does  not  throw  away  his  tackle,  but  rebaits  it  and  makes 
further  casts.  The  minor  role  played  by  such  external 
failures,  disappointments  and  sorrows  is  in  contrast  to 
the  great  role  which  internal  conflicts  —  opposing  trends 
within  the  personality  —  play  in  the  maladjustment  of 
behavior.  It  is  not  the  whole-hearted  lover  whom  dis- 
appointment drives  to  suicide,  but  the  one  to  whom  the 
conflict  between  love  of  woman  and  love  of  self  has  be- 
come intolerable.  The  "  real,"  objective  difficulties  do 


40  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

not  of  themselves  induce  faulty  psychomotor  reactions 
to  the  situations  they  create.  Much  of  O.  Henry's  lit- 
erary genius  lay  in  his  portrayals  of  this  relation.  Nor- 
mal persons  do  their  best,  though  their  surroundings 
bring  them  neither  assured  nor  agreeable  food,  nor  com- 
fortable shelter,  nor  good  sexual  adjustments.  Human- 
ity has  braved  greater  trials  than  ever  caused  despair. 
IlJ_s  .equally  well  known  that  great  external  possessions 
do  not  guarantee  contentment  or  good  mjen^tal__bajan,cje^ 
"  AftlibugfPrommy  Merton  had  everything  he  wanted, 
he  became  fretful  and  unhappy."  Mental  balance  de- 
pends more  on  knowing  what  one  wants  than  upon  get- 
ting it. 

Human  ingenuity  has  mainly  been  concentrated  against 
the  external  difficulties  of  existence,  to  attain  the  "  mas- 
tery over  nature."  The  growing  intra-psychic  conflicts, 
on  the  other  hand,  have  not  so  successfully  been  dealt 
with.  While  man's  adjustment  to  his  surroundings  is 
no  longer  threatened  by  the  tiger  of  the  jungle,  it 
is  still  destroyed  by  more  insidious  forces  within  him- 
self. 

When  the  dynamo  is  properly  connected,  the  energy  it 
discharges  must  proceed  along  wires,  and  do  its  work 
through  motors,  coils  or  lamps.  If,  however,  a  circuit 
were  arranged  so  that  the  current  could  discharge  with- 
out overcoming  the  resistances  opposed  by  the  lamps  or 
motors,  it  would  not  travel  through  them,  and  they  would 
lie  dark  and  still.  Such  a  circuit  robs  the  machines  of 
the  energy  needed  to  perform  their  tasks.  It  is  known 
as  a  "  short  circuit."  The  current  does  not  go  out  to  do 
the  work  required  of  it,  but  takes  the  "  easiest  way  "  of 
discharge. 

We  have  seen  that  as  the  current  goes  out  to  its  work 


tl 


USE  AND  WASTE 

At 

through  motors,  so  the  living  organism  must  go  out  to 
satisfy  its  vital  needs  through  the  chase,  the  snare,  or  rec-  X*-  \ 
ompensed  labor.     But  the  human  mind  has  a  property  of 
presenting  desired  things  to  itself  somewhat  as  if  they 
were  really  there,  though  actually  they  are  not.     A  thing  •  ^^^ 
presented  in  this  way  is  called  a  mental  image.     If  it  is 
especially  hard  to  distinguish  from  a  real  thing,  or  is  mis- 
taken for  a  real  thing,  it  is  called  a  hallucination.     Freud 
believes  —  with  few  followers  2 —  that  the  original  or- 
ganism actually  hallucinated  its  needs  as  satisfied,  and 
only  when  this  imaginary  satisfaction  failed  did  it  have 
recourse  to  seeking  the  real  satisfactions.     While  this 
does  not  seem  likely,  there  is  no  question  that  we  get  from 
experience  the  material  to  construct  such  images.     After  \ 
such  experience,  a  need  might  be  met  either  by  the  "  real  "  J 
"  power-circuit "  of  external  reaction,  or  by  the  "  short-  ' 
circuit "  of  imaginal  or  hallucinatory  reaction. 

But  the  animal  that  hallucinated  air  would  suffocate,  r>auV 
and  spiritual  affinities  leave  no  offspring.  Such  reactions 
will  be  inadequate  because  they  can  never  meet  funda- 
mental organic  needs.  We  see  here  another  chief  factor 
in  the  waste  of  vital  energy  and  in  the  production  of  in- 
adequate reactions.  Such  reactions  are  produced  by  a 
basal  tendency  of  organisms  to  seek  pleasant  experiences 
and  avoid  unpleasant  ones.  They  belong  to  a  class  in 
which  the  external  effort  is  felt  as  too  unpleasant  (ap- 
parently because  of  the  labor  and  struggle  it  demands). 
Thp  iinplffflfflifngss  of  the  external  reaction  JS-frvoiftefl  by 
seeking  satisfactions  within  tfa  self.  "  My  mind  to  me 
a  kingdom  is."  Such  short-circuiting  of  vital  energy  is  * 
technically  called  introversion. 

*Cf.  Pfister,  D.  psa.  Met.,  259.    A  translation  by  C.  R.  Payne 
(Moffat  Yard  &  Co.)  appears  as  this  volume  is  in  press. 


42  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

A  state  of  introversion,  sufficiently  pronounced,  char- 
acterizes an  important  type  of  mental  disease. 

These  examples  will  give  you,  I  trust  [says  Jung,  in 
reviewing  a  case  of  this  nature],  an  idea  of  how  rich  is  the 
inner  life  of  this  patient,  who,  in  apparent  dullness  and 
apathy,  or,  as  we  say  "  demented,"  has  now  sat  for  twenty 
years  in  the  workroom,  mechanically  occupied  with  her  sew- 
ing, and  occasionally  bringing  out  a  few  disconnected  frag- 
ments of  speech,  which  no  one  has  understood  till  now. 
Her  fantastic  jumble  of  words  we  now  see  in  another  light ; 
they  are  fragments  of  cryptic  epigraphs,  bits  of  a  fairy- 
land fancy  that  has  loosed  itself  from  bitter  reality  to  found 
its  own  distant  kingdom,  whose  banquets  are  ever  spread, 
and  in  whose  golden  palaces  a  thousand  feasts  are  cele- 
brated. To  the  dim  cloud-world  of  real  things  she  leaves 
only  a  few  unintelligible  symbols,  which  need  not  to  be 
comprehended,  for  she  has  long  since  ceased  to  ask  that 
we  understand  her. 

Persons  in  the  extremes  of  this  condition  do  not  per- 
form the  simplest  acts  for  themselves.  They  must  be 
fed  by  tube,  and  they  exercise  no  restraint  in  obeying 
natural  wants.  They  appear  stuporous,  but  close  study 
has  given  various  evidence  that  they  are  not  so.  They 
appreciate  their  surroundings,  and  their  minds  are  active. 
But  their  vital  energy  is  short-circuited  through  their  own 
bodies  so  that  they  no  longer  react  to  their  surroundings 
in  ways  consistent  with  a  regulated  life. 

The  factor  of  pleasure  can  distort  the  reaction  in  other 
ways  besides  introversion.  People  take  alcohol  and  other 
harmful  drugs,  like  morphine  or  cocaine,  for  the  enjoy- 
ments they  afford.  Much  energy  may  be  externally  spent 
in  obtaining  the  means  for  these  gratifications.  The  ef- 
forts to  obtain  them  are  the  purest  instances  of  energy 
misspent  for  the  pleasure  obtained  through  misspending 
it.  For  alcohol,  morphine,  etc.,  are  harmful  from  the 


USE  AND  WASTE  48 

outset;  they  are  useful  only  in  special  circumstances  not 
frequent  enough  to  give  rise  to  an  instinctive  trend.  The 
enjoyments  of  alcoholism  and  morphinism  are  not  in- 
volved with  fundamentally  useful  trends  as  are  enjoy- 
ments of  sexual  or  gastronomic  dissipations.  It  is  as 
though  the  energy  of  the  dynamo  were  indeed  carried 
outside,  but  spent  in  destructive  ways,  or  at  best  only  in 
lighting  the  little  Geissler  tubes,  which  look  pretty 
enough,  but  do  no  useful  work. 

But  in  the  healthier  ways  also,  one  may  spend  a  great 
deal  of  intelligent  external  effort  in  obtaining  pleasures 
whose  enjoyment  is  not  good  for  the  organism.  These 
belong  to  a  class  already  considered,  in  which  the  reac- 
tion is  in  itself  legitimate,  but  bad  in  the  particular  situa- 
tion. Probably  most  (though  not  all)  reactions  that  give 
pleasure  are  also  parts  of  trends  which  at  some  times 
and  under  some  circumstances  have  been  useful  to  the 
organism.  It  is  the  change  in  time  and  circumstance 
that  makes  them  harmful.  Sugar,  which  is  pleasure- 
able  to  eat,  is,  in  general,  good.  It  is  when  one  eats  too 
much,  or  when  the  stomach  is  disordered,  that  it  makes 
one  sick.  The  pleasures  of  sexual  relationships  are  in- 
dubitably useful  for  racial  continuity ;  but  they  may  also 
lead  to  excessive  and  harmful  indulgence. 

To  sum  up  briefly  the  points  of  discussion :  thjgLiisa  o£- 
vital  fnpgpy  I*™  in  its  dig^harge  alon^  wavs  that  produce 
action  necessary  to  fhf  pirgnni'cir">0  cnrv^i  These  ways 
we  call  the  fundamental  trends.  In  the  first  instance  they 
are  concerned  with  the  performance  of  vital  ^functions, 
such  as  respiration,  nutrition  and  reproduction.  Com- 
bat^ and  social-trends  arise  as  adjuncts  and  supplements 
to  these.  Human  conduct  is  made  up  of  a  great  many 
different  trends  or  behavior-patterns  which  serve  the  sev- 


44  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

eral  ends,  though  often  very  indirectly.  The  use  of  vital 
energy  is  like  the  use  of  electric  power  from  a  dynamo. 
Energy  is  converted  for  the  body's  use,  as  the  power  of 
the  falling  water  is  changed  into  an  electric  current.  The 
fundamental  trends  represent  the  several  functions  which 
the  current  can  perform:  like  food  seeking,  sexual  reac- 
tions, combativeness  on  the  one  hand;  light,  heat  and 
power  on  the  other. 

The  waste  of  vital  energy  lies  in  expenditure  of  it 
which  does  not  serve,  or  may  even  hinder,  the  activity 
of  the  fundamental  trends.  The  general  ways  in  which 
it  takes  place  are:  (i)  A  change  in  the  external  situa- 
tion which  makes  the  instinctive  reaction  inappropriate, 
as  when  the  fish  bites  the  baited  hook.  This  reaction 
corresponds  to  a  motor  properly  connected  to  the  dy- 
namo, but  improperly  to  its  machines.  (2)  The  more 
remote  any  reaction  is  from  the  end-realization  of  the 
trend  of  which  it  is  a  part,  the  greater  the  chance  of  its 
being  inappropriate  according  to  principle  (i).  (3) 
Different  trends  of  the  personality  may  oppose  one  an- 
other (e.g.,  desire  and  modesty),  causing  m£ntal_conflict. 
The  multiplicity  of  human  trends  makes  this  an  espe- 
cially important  factor  in  the  case  of  man  as  compared 
with  animals.  Animals  are  more  subject  to  disturbances 
according  to  principle  (i).  Mental  conflict  corresponds 
to  the  crossing  of  electric  circuits.  The  trends  involved 
are  more  or  less  blocked.  (4)  If  the  conflict  is  mainly 
between  a  trend  and  external  obstacles,  without  impor- 
tant division  of  the  personality  against  itself,  the  disturb- 
ance of  mental  adaptation  is  not  nearly  so  serious.  (5) 
The  shirking  of  effort  necessary  for  the  realization  of 
fundamental  trends  seeks  satisfaction  in  subjective  men- 
tal activity  (e.g.,  day-dreaming).  This  corresponds  to 


USE  AND  WASTE  45 

the  short-circuiting  of  electric  energy  and  the  resulting 
failure  to  travel  through  its  appointed  ways.  It  is  called 
It  is  a  very  serious  factor  in  maladjust- 


me'IlL  (o)  Pleasures  harmful  to  the  organism  may  also 
be  sought  through  external  effort.  They  may  be  harm- 
ful generally,  as  alcohol;  or  only  incidentally,  like  over- 
eating a  craved  food. 

In  presenting  these  points,  we  have  many  times  crossed 
the  boundary  between  the  motor  and  mental  varieties  of 
behavior,  granting,  indeed,  that  such  a  boundary  exists. 
The  same  principles  that  operate  to  make  an  action  use- 
ful or  not,  operate  to  make  a  thought  useful  or  the  re- 
verse. Like  conduct,  thought  is  useful  if  it  aids  in  the 
adaptation  to  surroundings,  wasteful  if  it  fails  to  do  so. 
We  shall  see  how  conscious  thought  is  apparently  an  es- 
sential factor  in  some  of  the  more  complicated  adapta- 
tions. But  we  shall  also  see  that  men  can,  and  do.  afford 
to  think  more  loosely,  and  in  a  much  greater  variety  of 
ways,  than  they  can  afford  to  act.  If  the  pilot  makes 
port,  in  Frazer's  metaphor,  it  matters  little  if  he  steers 
by  a  Jack-o'Lantern  or  by  the  stars.3  A  savage  can  well 
afford  to  believe  that  the  earth  is  flat,  and  for  him  it  is 

I"  true  "  that  the  earth  is  flat.  We_jiTu^t_jTot^judge  the 
usefulness  or  ^wastefulness  of  a  thought  intertns  of  any 
'•absolute  "  truth  or  falsity?  Ideas  have  been  practicaT 
tHat  have  later  been  found  untrue,  such  as  the  primitive 
belief  regarding  the  earth's  form.  Other  things  that  we 
may  accept  as  true,  like  the  binomial  theorem,  are  still 
without  practical  significance  to  the  mass  of  us.  Now  if 
belief  began  and  ended  with  belief,  without  representation 
in  conduct,  it  would  be  proper  enough  for  one  to  think 

3Cf.    Macallum,    "Scientific    Truth    and    the    Scientific    Spirit" 
Science,  43  (1916),  439-446. 


46  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

that  the  earth  is  flat,  or  that  eclipses  are  made  by  witch- 
craft. But  the  savage  who  thought  eclipses  were  made 
by  witchcraft  would  be  apt  to  waste  his  energy  in  vain 
charms  against  them,  while  his  wiser  brother  made  them 
the  occasion  for  gathering  scientific  knowledge.  Thus  it 
is  that  certain  ideas  —  such  as  that  you  can  injure  your 
enemy  by  injuring  a  likeness  of  him  —  are,  when  acted 
upon,  much  more  likely  to  result  in  unadapted  behavior 
than  certain  other  ideas,  such  as  that  you  can  injure  your 
enemy  by  piercing  him  with  a  spear.  The  former  kind 

,^        of  ideas  we  call  false  ideas,  the  latter  true  ones.     What 
distinguishes  true  ideas  from  false  ones  is  simply  that 

J          true  ideas  are  represented  in  conduct  by  useful  reactions, 

'«frx    and  false  ideas  by  wasteful  ones. 

Consecutive  thinking  consists  of  associations  of  ideas. 
"  ^sociativ£_thinking  "  —  though  a  tautological  term  — 
will  be  useful  as  a  generic  term  for  all  kinds  of  thinking, 
Some  kinds  of  associative 


duct  byj^s^^TGa^i^^and^l^llJ^Q''  thinking;  other 
kinds_by_  wasteliil^reactiojis^  .and  .are-"  ialse_1  linking. 
But,  in  this  conception,  what  is  true  at  one  time  and  place 
is  false  at  another  time  and  place  ;  not  even  a  "  hair  per- 
haps  divides  the  false  and  true."  We  therefore  avoid 
these  terms,  with  their  ingrained  connotation  of  a  sharp 
contrast. 

We  do,  however,  conceive  associative  thinking  as 
of  two  sorts,  one  of  which  "  works  "  and  the  other 
does  not.  The  kinds  of  thinking  which  work  (as  that  it 
will  injure  your  enemy  to  pierce  his  breast  with  a  spear) 
have  been  called  realistic  thinking1  (Bleuler,  Freud),  or 
directive  thinking  J^ung,  quoting  James).  The  kinds 
which  do  not  "work  "  (as  that  it  injures  your  enemy  to 
behead  an  image  of  him),  have  been  called  autistic  think- 


USE  AND  WASTE  47 

ing  (Bleuler),  or  phantastic  thinking__Qung).  We  shall 
use  Bleuler's  terms  ol  realistic  sindaittistic,  because  he 
has  given  us  the  fullest  and  clearest  development  of  the 
conception.  To  summarize : 

Associative  thinking  divides  into: 


False,"  or!  "  True,"  or 


J.     C4J»?V-y  VX*      I  *••    *    I.  t  V   . 

Phantastic    i- Thinking     {]  and       Directive 


Autistic  Realistic 


r- Thinking 


In  general,  a  tendency  to  realistic,  "  logical,"  "  com- 
mon-sense "  thinking  grows  in  us  by  reason  of  its  service 
in  meeting  our  situations  favorably  and  wholesomely. 
Just  as  useful  patterns  of  behavior  tend  to  be  perpetuated, 
and  harmful  ones  to  disappear  by  selection,  so  have  the 
modes  of  thought  that  are  more  useful  tended  more  and 
more  to  order  our  important  actions.  Almost  the  entire 
thinking  of  primitive  humanity  was  governed  by  indis- 
criminate, simply  associative  modes  of  thought,  not  yet 
subjected  to  the  selective  test  of  "  working  "  or  failure. 
Autistic  thinking  in  relation  to  the  sphere  of  voluntary 
conduct  is  therefore  very  prominent  in  them.  Such 
thinking  appears  in  the  foreground  of  mental  disease  as 
we  see  it  to-day.  But  in  normal  persons,  autistic  think- 
in£jsj[rajdu_allyjbeing  relegated  to  less  essential  functions, 
like  dreaming,  wrt^and  forms  ofjngiteJ_recreatioji.  In 
the  mentally  healthier  persons,  this  relegation  and  selec- 
tion is  the  more  complete.  Realistic  and  directive  think- 
ing has  been  more  and  more  selected  for  survival.  "  The 
more  nearly  custom  represents  a  direct  reaction  on  the  en- 
vironment in  the  actual  struggle  for  material  aids  to  ex- 
istence, the  more  rational  [realistic]  a  test  does  it 
undergo;  and,  conversely,  the  more  derived  the  societal 
forms,  the  more  clearly  do  they  fall  under  the  tests 


48  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

of  tradition   [which  are  autistic]   rather  than  of   rea- 
son." 4 

It  has  been  indicated  that  the  most  fundamental  needs 
of  human  nature,  like  those  for  air  and  water,  are  com- 
paratively free  from  such  autistic  interference.  The  food 
of  which  the  Malagasy  warrior  is  deprived  by  his  peculiar 
superstition  5  may  be  a  convenient  one,  but  it  is  not  es- 
sential to  his  existence.  If  it  were  essential,  the  super- 
stition would  not  arise.  There  is  a  "  critical  point "  in 
autistic  thinking,  beyond  which  wasteful  acts  in  accord-  / 
ance  with  it  will  not  be  performed.  Carveth  Read  6  cites 
a  tribe  which  regarded  as  a  spirit  or  ghost  a  large  eel 
living  in  a  nearby  stream.  In  consequence,  no  one  might 
drink  at  the  stream.  One  pool,  however,  "  for  conven- 
ience," was  not  included  in  the  tabu. 

The  genial  discoverer  of  roast  pig  had  to  burn  his 
house  down  whenever  he  desired  this  delicacy,  until  he 
found  that  it  could  be  prepared  at  a  smaller  fire  built  for 
the  purpose.  In  like  manner,  some  savages  must  needs 
abandon  a  house  in  which  a  person  has  died,  but  others 
avoid  this  waste  of  property  by  simply  carrying  the  corpse 
out  through  a  hole  in  the  wall,  which  is  immediately 
stopped  up  so  that  the  ghost  cannot  find  his  way  back. 
An  ax  is  a  pretty  necessary  tool  for  the  savage;  hence, 
the  Australians  mentioned  by  Sumner  exempt  it  from  the 
burial  to  which  they  commit  the  remaining  possessions  of 
the  deceased.  As  Read  sums  it  up,  "jjjcojiflicting  (jesire 
creates  a  limiting  belief." 

iJn  the  other  hand,  autistic  thinking  retards  the  correct 
interpretation  of  a  fact,  where  the  fact  has  not  the  imme- 

4  Keller,  "Societal  Evolution"  (1915),  132.     (Matter  in  brackets 
added.) 

5  Described  infra,  p.  57. 

8  "  Psychology  of  Animism,"  Br.  J.  Psych,  8  (1915),  1-32. 


USE  AND  WASTE  49 

diate  and  practical  significance  that  obtains  in  the  above 
instances.  In  1878  a  man  published  a  finding,  based  upon 
"  exhaustive  investigation  of  the  instrument,"  that  the 
Edison  phonograph  produced  its  effect  not  by  mechanical 
but  by  fraudulent  means.7  Joseph  Conrad  gives  two  ex- 
cellent delineations  of  such  adherence  to  autistic  modes  of 
thought,  opposed  to  the  face  value  of  the  data  of  sense- 
experience  : 

.  .  .  and  he  knew  that  they  were  all  brothers,  and  also 
immortal.  The  death  of  the  artist,  who  was  the  first  white 
man  whom  he  knew  intimately,  did  not  disturb  this  belief, 
because  he  was  firmly  convinced  that  the  white  stranger 
had  pretended  to  die  and  got  himself  buried  for  some  mys- 
terious purpose  of  his  own,  into  which  it  was  useless  to 
inquire.  Perhaps  it  was  his  way  of  going  home  to  his  own 
country?  .  .  . 

.  .  .  Moreover,  they  disliked  Arsat,  first  as  a  stranger, 
and  secondly,  because  he  who  repairs  a  ruined  house,  and 
dwells  in  it,  proclaims  that  he  is  not  afraid  to  live  amongst 
the  spirits  that  haunt  the  places  abandoned  by  mankind. 
Such  a  man  can  disturb  the  course  of  fate  by  glances  or 
words ;  while  his  familiar  ghosts  are  not  easy  to  propitiate 
by  casual  wayfarers  upon  whom  they  long  to  wreak  the 
malice  of  their  human  master.  White  men  care  not  for 
such  things,  being  unbelievers  and  in  league  with  the  Father 
of  Evil,  who  leads  them  unharmed  through  the  invisible 
dangers  of  this  world.  To  the  warnings  of  the  righteous 
they  oppose  an  offensive  pretense  of  disbelief.  What  is 
there  to  be  done  ? 8 

,We  have  no  means  of  knowing  whether  our  thinking 
is  realistic  or  autistic  unless  we  are  aware  of  it,  unless  it 
is  consciously  entertained.  We  shall  therefore  consider 
the  question :  under  yvhat^ circumstances  is  (conscious ) 
realistic  thinking^  a  requisite  part  of_adequately  meeting 
a  situation? 

7  Quoted  by  Pfister  from  Kemmerich,  "  Kulturkuriosa." 

8  "  Tales  of  Unrest,"  161-162,  323-324. 

6 


50  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

Whether  or  not  an  animal  survives  in  the  world  de- 
pends in  the  first  instance  on  how  it  acts  toward  its  en- 
vironment, and  not  on  how  it  thinks  about  it.  To  the 
child  or  primitive  man  it  makes  little  difference  whether 
he  thinks  of  the  rain  as  atmospheric  precipitation  or  as 
angels'  tears  for  the  world's  wickedness,  so  long  as  he 
has  sense  enough  to  come  in  out  of  the  rain.  But  if  an 
Indian  is  about  to  go  seal  hunting,  or  the  child  to  grow 
a  little  garden,  much  more  depends  on  good  foretelling 
of  the  weather.  Then  vit  would  work  better  to  consult 
meteorological  observations  than  police  court  records. 
But  such  action  involves  looking  upon  the  rain  not  as 
angels'  tears,  but  as  atmospheric  precipitation.  People 
who  acted  on  the  former  supposition  would  not  foretell 
the  weather  so  well.  In  this  way,  certain  kinds  of 
thought  or  belief  are  useful,  others  wasteful  or  harmful;  v' 
some  serve  to  direct  actions  which  result  well,  others 
badly. 

We  regard  the  action  as  dependent  on  the  thought  be- 
cause the  action  would  not  take  place  without  the  previous 
presence  of  the  thought.  Further  example  may  show 
more  clearly  this  direct  dependence  of  a  well  adapted 
action  on  a  certain  kind  of  thought.  Suppose  I  am  to 
interview  a  man  living  in  Pittsburgh;  I  naturally  order 
my  plans  to  go  to  Pittsburgh.  Meanwhile  my  eye  falls 
on  a  telegram  announcing  that  he  has  gone  to  Buffalo. 
My  conduct  will  be  altered  in  response  to  that  stimulus, 
and  I  shall  not  go  to  Pittsburgh,  but  to  Buffalo.  But, 
unless  the  idea  that  he  is  now  in  Buffalo  has  first  come  to 
my  awareness,  I  shall  still  go  to  Pittsburgh,  and  miss  him. 

Again,  the  information  "  he  has  gone  to  Buffalo " 
being  received,  there  must  be  a  correct  interpretation  of 
it.  There  must  be  a  correct  mental  reaction  to  it  that 


USE  AND  WASTE  51 

there  may  be  a  correct  bodily  reaction.  I  must  not  think 
that  he  can  be  in  Pittsburgh  and  Buffalo  at  once.  I  must 
not  think  that  only  his  body  has  gone  to  Buffalo  while  his 
soul  is  still  in  Pittsburgh.  I  must  not  think  that  he  is  to 
be  reached  in  the  buffalo  range  at  the  Zoological  Park. 
These  "  autistic  "  modes  of  interpretation  must  be 
avoided.  I  must  realize  that  the  fact  of  his  having  gone 
to  Buffalo  precludes  my  meeting  him  anywhere  but  in 
the  city  of  Buffalo.  Only  then  shall  I  act  properly  by 
going  there. 

Many  activities  have  not  this  dependence  upon  a  proper 
mental  reaction.     Digestion  and  procreation  go  on  no 
matter  what  fantastic  ideas  QJIP  may  have  concerning  3 
them._   We  do  not  have  to  reflect  that  we  are  being  f 
burned,  to  draw  the  hand  away  from  the  flame.     Only 
the  more  complex  vital  activities  are  thus  dependent  on 
correct  antecedent  thought. 

It  is  when  the  question  of  the  control  or  application 
of  the  facts  of  nature  enters  that  it  makes  a  difference 
whether  our  thought  about  them  is  "  true  "  or  "  false." 
Thinking  that  is  true,  i.  e.,  that  fits  in  with  all  experience 
by  which  it  can  be  tested,  is  what  has  been  termed 
"  realistic  thinking."  Thus  the  thought  "  I  should  go 
to  Buffalo  myself  if  I  wish  to  see  the  man  who  has  gone 
there,"  is  a  part  of  realistic  thinking.  If  I  thought  that 
I  might  save  myself  the  trouble  and  expense  of  going 
to  Buffalo  by  simply  holding  telepathic  communication 
with  him,  that  would  be  out  of  accord  with  experience. 
It  would  belong  to  the  other  type  of  mental  activity,  to/ 
which  Bleuler  gave  the  name  of  "  autistic  thinking." 


^The  distinction  of  realistic  and  autistic  thinking  i  s 
one^of  degree  rather  than  of  kincl.^  Those  ideas  that 
accord  with  current  experience  we  consider  as  realistic 


52  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

thinking.  Mentajjjrocesses  that  do  not  accord  with  the 
world's  experience  we  call  autistic-4hiak4*ig.  To-day  we 
assign  to  the  domain  of  autistic  thinking  many  ideas,  like 
the  flatness  of  the  earth,  which  were  realistic  thinking  by 
the  experience  which  past  ages  could  apply  to  them. 
Such  ideas  we  now  see  only  in  dreams,  jokes,  imagina- 
tion, or  plainljMllogical_reasoning.  They  seemed  to  more 
pmmtive  minds  wholly  consistent  with  the  known  facts 
of  life.  The  hero  of  myth  could  escape  by  crawling 
under  the  horizon.  But  it  is  now  only  in  jest  that  he 
can  crawl  through  a  hole  and  pull  the  hole  through  after 
him. 

The  point  to  be  made  is,  that  prevailing  ideas  have 
been  modified  in  evolution  for  the  benefit  of  the  indi- 
vidual, just  as  the  external  behavior-patterns  have  been 
modified.  The  modes  of  thought  and  inference  used  by 
the  child  or  savage  differ  widely  indeed  from  those  of  the 
cultured  man  of  business  or  science.  The  latter  does 
not  think  he  can  injure  an  enemy  by  injuring  an  image 
of  him;  the  former  does  think  so,  and  acts  upon  the  be- 
lief. The  savage  can  afford  to  believe  that  the  earth  is 
flat  and  that  the  sun  is  a  disk  traveling  over  it.  The 
modern  navigator  can  scarcely  hold  such  ideas.  If  he 
should  hold  them,  he  must  keep  them  in  a  "logic-tight 
compartment "  away  from  his  professional  conduct. 
The  child  can  afford  to  let  his  world  of  fancies  be  real 
to  him,  because  his  real  needs  of  food  and  shelter  are 
met  for  him  by  his  parents.  Thus  a  great  many  thoughts 
and  notions  exist  in  the  childhood  of  the  individual  and 
of  the  race,  which,  as  experience  grows,  fail  to  meet  the 
greater  demands  of  advancing  culture,  and  must  eventu- 
ally be  discarded. 

If  one  were  asked  to  name  a  distinguishing  character- 


USE  AND  WASTE  °      53 

istic  in  the  instinctive  life  of  men^ntTanimals,  one  could 
scarcely  do  better  than  to  §a^1nat  men  are  distinguished 
by  a  characteristic  instinct  for  conceptions  of  natural 
causes  and  effects.  It  is  by  furnishing  these  conceptions 
tKaT  the  mind  is  useful  in  molding  the  world  to  our  de- 
sires. Only  through  them  are  the  more  complex  natural 
phenomena  to  be  utilized  by  us.  The  instinct-trend  for 
developing  these  conceptions  is  infinitely  stronger  than, 
and  far  outpaces,  the  influence  of  reason  in  keeping  them 
correct.  The  great  mass  of  folk-beliefs  about  natural 
phenomena  are  false ;  °  they  arose  in  response  to  im- 
perious  desire  for  some  means  of  controlling  these 
phenomena.  The  savage  wishes  to  control  the  seasons; 
to  send  sickness  to  his  enemy;  to  be  successful  in  the 
hunt.  Therefore,  he  needs  and  develops  rigid  ideas  of 
the  proper  way  to  accomplish  these  things.  The  uniform 
falsity  of  these  ideas  seems  to  have  no  influence  on  their 
development,  and  only  a  very  slight  one  on  their  per- 
sistence. There  are  today  superstitions  about  wireless 
telegraphy  that  must  have  arisen  since  the  apparatus  was 
introduced.  Magic  is  a  name  applied  to  certain  primi- 
tive  conceptions  of  natural  causes  and  effects.  Magical 
beliefs  have  arisen,  not  by  way  of  scientific  experiment, 
but,  as  above,  by  vague,  irrelevant  and  chance  associations 
of  the  ideas  involved.  Thus  they  are  extremely  likely 
to  be  false.  They  are  among  the  most  important  pro- 
ducts of  autistic  modes  of  thought.  Frazer  points  out 
that,  as  their  unfitness  begins  to  be  perceived,  they  are 
first  displaced  by  a  religious  appeal  to  the  supernatural 
for  the  control  of  forces  that  men  cannot  command. 
Then,  as  experience  grows,  the  false  ideas  of  nature  in 

9  For  examples  of  usages  arising  from  false  inference,  cf.  Sumner, 
"Folkways"  (1913),  24-25. 


5*  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

magic  are  corrected  in  the  name  of  science.10  The  re- 
interpretation  of  phenomena  on  a  natural  basis  now  re- 
places the  appeal  to  the  supernatural. 
/'The  fundamental  principle  of  autistic  thinking  is, 
f  that  things  are  considered  to  be  in  the  relations  of 
identity,  or  of  cause  and  effect,  simply  because  they  hap- 
pen to  be  associated  together  in  the  mind.  From  this  we 
derive  the  conception  of  symbolism.  A  familiar  form 
of  autistic  thinking  attributes  responsibility  for  an  oc- 
currence to  the  nearest  person  involved  in  it.  The  an- 
cients considered  the  herald  responsible  for  the  news  he 
brought,  and  executed  him  if  he  brought  bad  tidings. 
People  today  feel  resentment  toward  the  telephone  oper- 
ator who  tells  them  that  the  line  is  busy,  and  to  a  less 
degree  toward  the  meteorologist  who  forecasts  bad 
weather.  In  a  further  step  toward  reality,  we  jokingly 
chide  the  postman  who  has  no  letters  for  us.  These  cases 
show  plainly  the  assignment  of  a  cause  on  the  basis  of 
the  primitive  associative  mechanism;  that  of  temporal 
contiguity.  More  rationalized  mechanisms  of  associ- 
ation are  found  in  the  ordeals :  the  fire  will  not  burn  the 
suspect  if  he  is  innocent;  the  water  will  not  receive  him 
if  he  is  guilty;  the  just  cause  will  triumph  in  combat. 
As  we  have  seen,  the  whole  doctrine  of  sympathetic 
magic  exemplifies  the  autistic  mode  of  thought.  It  does 
not  fit  any  test  of  experience.  Now,  it  is  obviously  less 
trouble,  not  to  say  safer,  to  hang  an  image  of  one's 
enemy  than  to  go  out  and  fight  him.  Thus,  a  very  pow- 
erful factor  in  the  preservation  of  autistic  thinking  is 
that  of  greater  immediate  ease.  The  importance  of  this 
greater  immediate  ease  has  grown  with  mental  evolution. 

10  An  essentially  similar  view  is  referred  by  McDougall,  "  Social 
Psychology"  (1914),  317,  to  Stuart  Glennie. 


USE  AND  WASTE  55 

It  is  easier  to  call  your  opponent  names  than  to  show 
the  logical  weaknesses  of  his  theory,  if  indeed  it  has  any. 
In  civilized  life,  autistic  modes  df  thought  regularly 
occur  because  they  are  easier,  when  the  easier  way  will 
do.  The  chief  examples  of  autistic  mental  activity  are 
now  found  in  those  passages  of  life  in  which  the  mind  is 
not  called  upon  for  the  direct  meeting  of  some  organic 
need.  That  is,  they  are  found  in  wit,  in  dreams,  in  the 
child  mind,  in  poetry.  Whenever,  as  in  these  instances, 
one  is  freed  from  the  limitations  which  logical,  reasoned, 
experiential  thinking  imposes,  the  association  of  ideas 
can  afford  to  proceed  without  strict  accordance  to  logical 
principle.  These  modes  of  thought  are  also  richly  illus- 
trated in  abnormal  modes  of  thought  corresponding  to 
abnormal  trends  of  conduct:  such  are  the  symptoms  of 
mental  disease. 

There  is  a  familiar  biological  generalization  that  the 
individual  represents  in  his  development  the  development 
of  the  race.  The  child  physically  resembles  his  arboreal 
ancestor  more  than  does  the  adult,  and  his  mind  is  more 
like  that  of  primitive  man.  Evidence  is  accumulating 
that  the  false  ideas  of  mental  disease  also  show  features 
of  reversion;  that  is,  the  patient  makes  special  use  of 
autistic  mechanisms  in  his  modes  of  thought,  in  his  pro- 
cesses of  reasoning,  in'his  criteria  for  deductions.  There 
result  ideas  which  are  characteristic  of  former  periods  of 
race  development.  As  an  example,  Jung  cites  a  case 
of  paranoid  dementia  praecox,  who,  despite  a  good  educa- 
tion, reverts  to  the  primitive  belief  that  the  earth  is  flat, 
and  the  sun  a  disk  traveling  over  it.  The  extent  and 
character  of  the  parallel  between  pathological  ideas  and 
those  of  primitive  development,  dream-life,  etc.,  is  too 
large  for  suitable  treatment  in  this  volume.  We  shall 


56  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

here  confine  ourselves  to  studying  a  single,  well-defined 
aspect  of  this  parallel  between  autistic  modes  of  thought 
in  different  mental  processes. 

Of  all  associations,  one  of  the  most  superficial,  and 
least  likely  to  be  practically  relevant,  is  the  association 
between  two  ideas  through  their  designation  by  a  similar 
vocable.  Thus,  at  least  three  different  meanings  attach 
to  the  sound  representing  the  word  bear,  which  have  no 
logical  relation  to  one  another.  •  The  identification  of 
ideas  on  the  basis  of  the  similarity  or  contiguity  of  their 
phonetic  symbols  (a  pun)  is  one  of  the  purest  forms  of 
autistic  mental  activity.  We  are  to  examine  the  forms 
of  mental  activity  in  which  it  occurs. 

Its  most  familiar  appearance  to  us  is  that  of  punning. 
Here  the  play  on  words  uses  the  sound  of  a  word  or  some 
irrelevant  feature  of  its  meaning  to  convey  unexpected 
ideas  not  in  accord  with  reality.  For  example,  it  was 
easy  for  Washington  to  throw  a  dollar  across  the  Po- 
tomac, who  had  thrown  a  sovereign  across  the  Atlantic. 
The  best  known  of  these  occur  in  the  form  of  conun- 
drums. The  telephone  number  of  the  Garden  of  Eden 
was  281  Apple  (two  ate  one  apple).  By  similar  tokens 
we  learn  the  difference  between  a  shoemaker  and  a  poet 
(makes  shoes,  shakes  Muse)  ;  why  no  one  need  starve  in 
the  Arabian  desert  (because  of  the  sandwiches  [sand 
which  is]  there) ;  together  with  the  origin  of  the  food 
supply  (the  children  of  Ham  were  bred  and  mustered 
there;  when  Lot's  wife  was  turned  into  a  pillar  of  salt  all 
the  family  but  her  ran  down  into  the  desert).  Some- 
times the  association  is  very  remote,  and  established 
through  many  intermediaries,  as  the  reason  for  the  blind- 
ness of  the  wind,  the  steps  being  breeze,  zephyr,  yarn, 
tale,  attachment,  love,  blind. 


USE  AND  WASTE  67 

While  thought  processes  of  this  kind  are  many  times 
multiplied  in  normal  life,  they  are  not  accepted  at  their 
face  value;  the  normal  traveler  in  the  desert  does  not 
equip  his  caravan  with  nothing  to  eat.  Such  a  mechan- 
ism does  not  occur  in  the  thought  by  which  the  individual 
lives.  Any  one  who  held  telephonic  conversations  with 
the  cradle  of  our  race  would  rightly  be  regarded  as  patho- 
logical. One  may  still  cross  himself  on  breaking  a 
mirror;  one  may  refuse  to  sit  one  of  thirteen  at  a  table; 
one  may  knock  on  wood  on  announcement  of  a  piece  of 
good  fortune ;  but  play  onjwords  is  play  only,  and  who- 
ever develops  the  shadow  of  belief  that  "  ef  time  was 
money,  Ah'd  be  a  millionaire,"  shall  scarce  escape  the 
mark  of  schizophrenia.11  To  base  one's  reasoning  on 
such  purely  verbal  or  phonetic  grounds,  is  the  most 
abrupt  transition  from  the  healthy  mind  to  the  diseased 
one.  The  healthy  mind  shows  scarcely  anything  like  it; 
with  diseased  minds  it  is  fairly  common. 

It  is  not  wholly  absent  in  normal  minds.  In  the  stu- 
pendous folkway  material  gathered  in  "  The  Golden 
Bough,"  scattered  instances  appear  of  usages  apparently 
determined  by  certain  similarities  in  the  sound  of  words. 
The  most  striking  example  is  the  Malagasy  prohibition  of 
warriors  from  eating  kidneys.  For,  "  in  the  Malagasy 
language,  the  word  for  kidney  is  the  same  as  that  for 
shot;  so  shot  he  would  certainly  be  if  he  ate  a  kidney." 
There  are  a  number  of  cases  in  which  names  of  common 
objects  are  tabu  if  they  coincide  with  the  names  of  cer- 
tain persons.  "  For  example,  if  my  father  is  called 
Njara  (horse)  I  may  not  speak  of  him  by  that  name; 
but  in  speaking  of  the  animal  I  am  free  to  use  the  word 

11  A  term  first  applied  by  Bleuler  to  mental  diseases  in  which  there 
is,  as  it  were,  a  schism  of  the  mind  against  itself.    Cf.  ch.  V,  p.  197. 


58  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

horse  (w/ara).  But  if  my  father-in-law  is  called  Njara, 
the  case  is  different,  for  then  not  only  may  I  not  refer 
to  him  by  his  name,  but  I  may  not  even  call  a  horse  a 
horse;  in  speaking  of  the  animal  I  must  use  some  other 
word"  (Alfoors  of  Poso,  central  Celebes).  Among  the 
Alfoors  of  Minahassa,  northern  Celebes,  the  custom  is 
extended  to  forbid  the  use  of  words  which  simply  re- 
semble the  personal  names  in  sound.  If  the  father-in- 
law  is  called  Kalala,  his  son-in-law  may  not  speak  of  a 
horse  by  its  common  name,  kaivalo;  he  must  call  it  a 
"  riding  beast."  Cases  are  reported  from  the  Zulus 
where  common  words  were  changed  because  they  re- 
sembled the  tabued  names  of  chiefs.  "  The  word  for 
'  lies '  or  '  slander '  was  changed  from  amaccbo  to 
amakwata,  because  amaccbo  contains  a  syllable  of  the 
name  of  the  famous  King  Cetchwayo."  In  Madagascar, 
after  the  death  of  King  Makka,  the  word  laka  (canoe) 
was  replaced  by  fiounrama  (Sakalava  tribe).  Similar 
usages  prevail  among  the  Malagasy  above  mentioned, 
and  in  Tahiti ;  here,  when  a  king  Tu  came  to  the  throne, 
tia  was  substituted  for  tu  in  various  words.  (Frazer).12 
Occasionally  the  dream  makes  a  play  on  words  similar  to 
that  of  the  pun.  For  example  (private  communication)  : 
Dream:  The  governing  body  of  a  university  con- 
siders a  scheme  for  the  prohibition  of  alcohol.  Upon 
voting,  it  is  found  that  every  one,  favoring  license,  is 
against  the  proposition.  "  Well,  gentlemen,"  remarks 
the  presiding  officer,  "  there  doesn't  seem  to  be  a  dry 
'  Aye '  in  the  house."  It  would  simply  be  carrying  the 
"  dream-work  "  a  step  further  to  represent  the  voters 
as  indicating  their  disapproval  by  weeping. 

12  Of.  many  analogous  examples  from  the  Qabala,  cited  by  Moses, 
Path.  A.  Rel,  161-168. 


USE  AND  WASTE  59 

The  "  Nervus  poculomotorius  "  quoted  by  Kraepelin 
is  a  similar  example.  This  example  (not  felt  as  a  joke) 
"is  associated  with  the  movement  of  the  arm  to  lift  the 
cup,  the  proper  words  being  derailed  by  the  similar  sound- 
ing Nervus  oculomotorius.  Here  belongs  also  the 
Frackelzug  cited  by  Vischer,  where  persons  with  burning 
coat  tails  (Frackschossen)  pass  in  review"  (Fackelsug, 
torchlight  procession). 

A  fairly  frequent  process  in  the  language  of  dreams 
is  that  in  which  two  or  more  ideas  are  combined  by  a 
fusion  of  certain  of  their  phonetic  elements.  Kraepelin 
presents  some  excellent  examples. 

DREAM  FORM  MEANING 

Psypen  Psychische  Typen 

Parringen  Parricida  u.  Berlichingen 

Bellfleisch  Das  fur  den  Hund  zurechtgeschnittene, 

von  ihm  in  der  Schiissel  zuriickge- 
lassene  Fleisch. 

Capriviera  Politische  Lage  zur  Zeit  Caprivis 

Geheimkopeken  Geheimpolizisten  (Presumably  a  mediate  as- 
sociation: Secret  police,  Russia,  Kopek) 

Scolex  Lateinisch  fur  "  der  Bucklige  " 

Wurzgrund  Grund,  der  mit  Wiirzburg  in  Beziehung 
steht. 

Some  of  these  suggest  the  lapsus  linguae  of  everyday 
life.  Dreams  of  the  writer's  supply  the  following: 

DREAM  FORM  APPARENT  ELEMENTS 

(Name  of  steamship)  Camennonia     Cameronia,  Pannonia 
(Name  of  mountain)    Chickatoharie   Chickataubut,    Cana- 

joharie 

Dream :  An  ocean  liner  is  aground,  and  two  smaller  ships 
are  standing  by.  The  names  of  these  smaller  ships  are  the 
Staria  and  the  Hicktnanite.  (At  the  time,  the  writer  saw 
much  of  the  psychologist,  Mr.  Hickman,  of  Utah,  who  was 
making  a  study  of  certain  aspects  of  Mormonism.  The 


60  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

suffix  ile  is  often  associated  with  the  naming  of  religious 
bodies.  The  connections  of  the  word  Star  and  the  suffix  ia 
with  ocean  transportation  are  obvious.) 

Another  dream  contains  the  repetition  of  a  sentence 
in  H.  G.  Wells'  "War  of  the  Worlds":  "He  swung 
loose  what  must  have  been  the  camera  of  the  Heat  Ray." 
This  becomes  in  the  dream :  "  He  swung  loose  what 
must  have  been  his  cang."  The  intruded  elements  are 
apparently  taken  from  a  neighboring  phrase,  "  the  clan- 
gorous din  of  the  Martians." 

This  process  of  denoting  the  combination  of  two  ideas 
by  an  arbitrary  fusion  of  their  phonetic  elements  is  met 
with  also  in  normal  speech,  quite  outside  the  domain  of 
wit.  It  occurs  every  day  in  the  formation  of  trade 
names  (Natco,  Nabisco,  Delco,  Socony,  Clupeco,13  etc.) 
Meteorologists  have  designated  a  combination  of  smoke 
and  fog  by  the  neologism  smog,  on  the  model  of  the 
slithy,  mome,  and  wabe  of  the  Jabbcrwock.  No  fol- 
lower of  baseball  disputed  the  temporary  value  of  such 
condensations  as  Brookfed,  Newfcd,  Chifcd,  to  denote 
members  of  the  Brooklyn,  Newark  and  Chicago  Federal 
Leagues. 

Many  cases  of  mental  disease  show  ideas  closely  cor- 
responding to  those  of  the  Malagasy  whose  warriors  may 
not  eat  kidneys  for  fear  of  being  "  shot."  Such  mental 
processes  are  in  pathological  cases  the  source  of,  or  ac- 
cepted as  the  rationalizations  of,  delusional  ideas.  A 
Unitarian  is  a  "  unit  of  the  Aryan  race  " ;  just  as  in 
dream  life  a  Wiirzgrund  is  a  reason  connected  with 
Wiirzburg,  or  in  real  life  a  Chi  fed  was  a  member 

13  Designating,  respectively,  products  of  the  National  Hollow  Tile 
Co.,  National  Biscuit  Co.,  Dayton  Electric  Co.,  Standard  Oil  Co.  of 
New  York,  Cluett,  Peabody  and  Co. 


USE  AND  WASTE  61 

of  the  Chicago  Federal  League.  The  psychotic  material 
to  be  here  cited  seems  confined  to  the  dementia  praecox 
group;  similar  processes  have,  however,  been  reported  in 
the  psychoneuroses.  It  is  also  true  that  the  manic- 
depressive  excitements  are  noteworthy  for  their  sound- 
associations,  though  delusions  are  not  readily  based  upon 
them;  hardly  at  all  save  in  marked  confusion.  The  de- 
mentia praecox  cases,  here  as  usual,  are  distinguished  by 
the  absence  of  confusion.  Such  a  dementia  praecox  case, 
S,  tells  us: 

That  he  had  been  confirmed  and  a  certificate  filled  in  by 
Mr.  X  ;  that  in  filling  in  the  certificate  the  name  was  changed, 
and  Mr.  X  wrote  his  name  Catterer.  He  says  that  he  seated 
himself  on  a  stool,  No.  10,  and  he  got  the  te  in  ten,  that 
Catterer  was  C-a-t,  cat,  t-e-r-e-r,  and  he  says  all  this  refers 
to  his  condition,  calling  him  a  cat  .  .  .  The  word  communi- 
cation, i-cat-on;  commission  has  the  «  without  the  cat.  It 
means  that  he  cannot  conscientiously  go  on  the  commis- 
sion. ..."  The  critical  point  came  when  I  was  accused  of 
being  a  cat.  The  newspapers  tried  to  advertise  me  as  a 
notorious  evil  liver.  Used  the  word  '  Krazy  Kat.'  .  .  .  All 
such  signs  K,  H,  E,  L,  F,  are  symbols  of  mediaeval  days. 
Letters  like  M,  P,  H,  K,  I  have  to  look  up  and  see  what 
the  symbols  stand  for."  (Is  it  a  system?)  "Yes,  and  in 
my  case  they  are  being  used  right  along.  I  have  only  to 
mention  '  Pall  Mall '  .  .  .  All  who  recognize  Greenwich  as 
the  meridian  accept  the  Anglican  Church  as  supreme. 
Therefore  Pall  Mall  .  .  .  P-all  M-all  .  .  .  P  may  mean 
posterior,  meaning  we  all  accept  the  Greenwich  meridian. 
M  has  a  V  connecting  the  two  horizontal  (sic)  lines,  that 
would  mean  '  connecting  link,'  meaning  this  fellow  is  all 
right,  so  that  when  M  is  written  that  way  it  is  compli- 
mentary." 

(About  four  months  later.)  The  patient  describes  with 
the  minutest  detail  how  he  interprets  the  individual  letters  of 
a  word  or  a  special  combination  of  letters  and  words  which 
he  reads  or  hears  spoken  as  being  signs  and  code  messages. 
In  a  similar  way  he  refers  to  a  slight  change  in  a  communion 
service,  in  which  the  minister  made  certain  remarks,  and  to 


62  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

his  going  to  the  Public  Library,  the  latter  word  being  divided 
in  such  a  way  as  to  have  reference  to  his  affairs. 

Case  P  showed,  among  other  features  of  note,  a  few 
processes  of  this  character,  as  the  writing  subjoined : 

Cf.  Revelation,  chap.  13,  verse  18. 
Six  hundred  three  score  six 
666 

V   V   V 

veni  vidi  vici 

Julius  Caesar  (patient  identified  himself  for  a 

time  with  this  personage) 
Pontifex  Maximus  of  Rome 
absolviren 

x 
absolviren 

x 

When  next  seen  the  patient  was  questioned  about  the 
sketch,  but  did  not  elaborate  upon  it  in  any  special  way. 
The  only  motive  he  gave  for  the  selection  of  Absolviren  was 
that  it  was  a  word  of  ten  letters  and  it  was  the  only  word  of 
that  kind  which  he  knew.  He  was  asked  why  he  might  not 
use  another  word  of  ten  letters  like  Epicanthus,  of  which 
the  sixth  letter  is  not  v.  He  seemed  interested  in  knowing 
that  there  was  such  a  word,  said  laughingly  that  he  supposed 
that  would  suggest  Nero  III,  though  he  did  not  have  in  mind 
any  historical  personage  of  this  title. 

Here  the  ideas  we  are  concerned  with  are  not  so  firmly 
held  as  in  the  other  cases,  and  there  is  more  tendency  to 
regard  some  of  them  facetiously;  thus,  from  another 
writing,  " iugum  cst  iugium"  (my  yoke  is  a  joke). 
From  a  letter: 

.  .  .  Becker  is  the  reincarnation  of  Thomas  von  Beckett 
the  martyr  to  the  cause  of  a  square  deal  for  innocent  blood, 
and  the  injustice  of  so-called  English  justice.  He  is  also 
the  reincarnation  of  the  corpse  whom  the  gunmen  let  down 
through  the  roof  on  Sunday,  whom  Christ  restored  to 
life  . 


USE  AND  WASTE  63 

The  similarity  of  names  does  not  however  play  an 
essential  role  in  these  reincarnations;  for  the  patient 
identifies  himself  with  the  personages  of  the  Trinity 
(more  especially  with  Christ  and  the  Holy  Ghost),  an- 
other patient  with  Noah,  where  the  names  have  no  simi- 
larity, as  well  as  the  writer  with  Nathaniel  of  the  New 
Testament,  but  also  with  Nathan  Hale,  addressing  letters 
to  him  under  this  name.  From  another  letter : 

And  out  of  his  mouth  went  a  sharp,  two-edged  sword. 
The  abbreviation,  Penna.  for  Pennsylvania,  means  "  wing  " 
in  Sanskrit,  and  "  quill "  in  Greek.  It  is  probably  the  two- 
edged  sword  referred  to. 

Following  are  wordplays  from  another  case  whose  de- 
lusional content  (that  we  cannot  go  into  here)  presents 
remarkable  parallels  to  that  of  P: 

Ho-spit-al  .  .  .  Ho  means  Hallo,  spit-all,  because  all 
here  spit  the  devil  out  of  them,  the  spit  means  just  to  throw 
it  off. 

William  .  .  .  Will-I-am.  Every  person  bearing  this 
name  contains  a  portion  of  the  "  direct  will  of  God." 

Buonaparte,  i.e.,  born  apart.  (Patient  identified  himself 
in  part  with  this  personage.) 

In  the  richness  and  fixity  of  such  ideas,  the  following 
case  F  can  seldom  have  been  surpassed,  and  calls  for 
presentation  in  some  detail.  It  is  one  of  a  small  group  of 
individuals  with  inferior  mental  constitutions,  who  are 
insignificant  parts  of  the  vast  system  of  haute  finance, 
over  which  they  have  no  control,  and  in  which  they  feel 
no  share,  but  develop  a  dementing  psychosis  in  which 
the  "  economic  complex  "  has  a  special  role  in  the  picture. 

The  patient  is  described  as  having  always  been  odd,  and 
never  "  confiding  "  in  any  one.  Would  leave  the  room  when 
it  was  entered  by  his  younger  brother,  who  was  making 
more  of  a  success  in  life.  Held  positions  at  various  occupa- 


64.  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

tions  but  did  not  keep  them,  the  last  one  being  for  three 
years  as  stenographer  with  a  financial  house,  at  $12  per 
week.  He  left  this  position  "  because  he  felt  he  was  not 
treated  right "  about  six  years  before  admission,  since  when 
he  has  not  worked.  At  the  time  of  admission  he  was  33 
years  of  age. 

Subjoined  is  a  sketch  by  the  patient  with  notes  from  his 
explanation  of  it : 


FIGURE  i 

There  are  two  a\y  in  Japan  and  Hawaii,  indicating  that 
Japan  is  entitled  to  a  share  in  Hawaii.  Further  evidences 
of  this  are  the  sacred  pines  of  Japan,  while  the  chief  product 
of  Hawaii  is  pineapples.  This  share  is  one-sixth ;  because 
it  is  now  the  3Oth  day  of  the  5th  month,  and  5  goes  into  30 
six  times.  Japan  to-day  owns  one  half  of  Hawaii,  but  she  is 
to  lose  a  third,  i.e.,  two-sixths.  She  holds  it  by  session; 
lots  are  to  be  drawn  by  position  to  secure  an  equitable  pro- 
portion of  holdings. 

.  .  .  His  ideas  he  derives  from  his  "  mind's  talking  to 
him."  .  .  .  This  does  not  have  tone  quality,  comes  merely  as 
thoughts.  .  .  .  He  told  of  a  "  tip  "  he  had  received  regard- 
ing the  rates  of  return  that  different  classes  of  people  were 
to  receive  for  their  labor;  that  the  lower  classes  were  to 


USE  AND  WASTE  65 

receive  $%  for  their  share,  the  upper  classes  5%.  3  is  to 
the  left  of  5  in  the  number  35,  indicating  the  inferiority  of 
those  who  share  at  this  rate.  He  had  seen  the  figure  35 
in  a  paper,  and  this  special  idea  attached  itself  to  it.  Pick- 
ing up  another  newspaper  that  happened  to  be  lying  near,  he 
said,  "  Let's  see  if  I  can't  find  something  to  show  it  here  — 
there's  a  3,  and  a  5,"  picking  them  out  from  different  por- 
tions of  the  sheet.  It  was  called  to  his  attention  that  the 
figure  53  occurred  thereon,  in  reverse  order  from  what  his 
scheme  demanded.  "  Yes,  but  that  doesn't  mean  anything 
to  me."  He  turned  the  leaves  and  came  to  an  advertisement 
where  on  the  left  side  of  the  page  something  was  quoted  at 
35  cents,  and  something  on  the  right  side  of  the  page  at  55 
cents,  calling  attention  to  this  as  double  evidence  for  the 
validity  of  his  idea.  Another  "  tip,"  which  he  did  not 
know  whether  workmen  would  make  use  of,  would  be  very 
valuable  to  them  if  they  did,  because  it  would  enable  them 
to  summarily  get  rid  of  any  "super"  (superior,  superin- 
tendent), who  treated  them  unjustly  or  persecuted  them. 
This  went  on  all  the  time,  he  said,  and  when  asked  to  illus- 
trate, told  of  how  a  "  super "  might  come  up  to  some 
"suitor"  (employee)  and  tell  him  "that  was  no  kind  of 
work  he  was  doing,"  and  that  he  was  no  good.  (The  pre- 
cise nature  of  the  "tip"  was  not  obtained.)  There  is  to 
be  a  square  deal  in  the  distribution  of  business  all  over  the 
world,  in  regard  to  which  he  had  received  a  "  tip  "  that  he 
should  take  away  one-third  of  all  the  shoe  business  from 
South  Australia.  A  half  of  this  third,  i.e.,  one-sixth,  he  is 
to  give  to  Salem,  Mass.,  to  compensate  it  for  its  loss  of 
standing  to  its  rivals,  as  Lowell  and  Lawrence.  The  other 
half  he  is  to  give  to  Elmira,  N.  Y.,  which  stands  in  near 
relation  to  Salem,  having  four  of  its  letters,  e,  I,  in,  perhaps 
also  a,  the  same.  Asked  about  the  ir,  he  dismissed  the  ques- 
tion with  a  simple  "  That^ doesn't  impress  me."  This  "de- 
preciation "  of  South  Australia's  shoe  industry  is  not  to  take 
xeffect  until  the  7th  day  of  the  6th  month,  hence  %.  Pos- 
sibly only  one-sixth  of  the  shoe  business  will  be  taken  away, 
in  which  case  Salem  and  Elmira  would  only  receive  l/i2, 
but  to  compensate  them  will  have  an  extra  share  in  the 
rubber  cloth  business.  Nor  is  Australia  entitled  to  the  use 
of  the  term  Queensland,  there  being  also  a  Queenstown  in 
England;  it  is  therefore  to  be  changed  to  something  else. 

8 


66 


MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 


Again,  the  bees  are  hostile  to  mankind,  and  sting  us,  be- 
cause we  insult  them  in  speaking  of  their  dwellings  as  hives, 
the  name  of  a  disagreeable  skin  affection;  we  should  call 
them  homes,  or  rather  hones,  because  bees  produce  honey, 
according  to  the  following  sketch : 


FIGURE  2 

Beeswax  should  be  employed  for  noble  purposes  only, 
and  not  for  such  lowly  uses  as  polishing  floors ;  because,  in 
thus  walking  on  the  products  of  their  labor,  we  "  walk  on," 
i.e.,  show  disrespect  to,  the  bees.  .  .  . 

As  he  was  writing  a  sketch  on  Japan  one  morning,  he 
was  watching  the  shadows  about  a  tree  in  the  yard;  sud- 
denly these  shadows  began  to  move  rapidly,  in  a  way  that 
his  mind  suggested  to  him  was  crab-like.  The  fact  that  he 
should  see  the  symbol  of  a  crab,  while  writing  a  sketch  on 
Japan,  suggested  the  export  of  tinned  crab-meat  from 
Japan ;  that  the  Japanese  have  a  great  deal  to  do  with  crabs. 
Crabs  perform  an  important  part  in  the  reproductive  func- 
tions of  fish,  for,  when  the  fish  have  laid  their  eggs,  it  is 
the  crabs  that  carry  to  them  the  fertilizing  element ;  without 
crabs,  no  reproduction  of  fish  would  be  practicable.  When 
reminded  that  fish  often  are  propagated  under  conditions 
where  crabs  are  excluded,  as  in  aquaria  and  hatcheries,  he 
refused  to  believe  it  was  by  any  natural  method,  saying  that 


USE  AND  WASTE  67 

the  keepers  of  such  institutions  had  their  own  secrets,  and 
might  be  able  to  accomplish  it  in  some  special  way.  Asked 
if  any  like  intermediary  were  concerned  in  the  propagation 
of  the  human  race,  he  said,  "  Well,  I've  had  them  on  me," 
and  went  on  to  tell  at  length  of  how  he  had  caught  crabs ; 
and  had  cured  himself  with  "  blue  butter "  (a  mercurial 
ointment) ;  how  they  were  about  the  size  of  a  cross  section 
of  spaghetti,  and  white,  the  color  of  human  flesh,  which 
they  might  be  made  of.  While  he  gave  no  exact  formula- 
tion of  their  role  in  human  reproduction,  he  said  quite 
plainly  that  he  thought  they  had  "  something  to  do  with  it." 

The  fact  that  these  two  arthropods  are  entirely  different 
in  species  and  nature  is  irrelevant ;  enough,  that  they  are 
designated  by  the  same  vocable,  that  they  have  corre- 
sponding symbioses  with  fish  and  men.  The  guess  may 
be  hazarded  that  the  latter-expressed  idea  is  psycho- 
genetically  the  earlier  one.  From  other  observations  it 
is  apparent  that  the  patient  is  also  acquainted  with  the 
actual  nature  of  sexual  relationships,  the  above  itself 
being  constructive  testimony  to  this. 

Apropos  of  nothing,  he  asked  the  examiner  what  he 
thought  of  the  guilt  of  Tucker,  executed  for  the  murder  of 
Mabel  Page.  He  himself  seemed  to  have  considerable 
doubt  as  to  whether  Tucker  merited  his  end,  which  he 
rationalized  as  follows:  If  one  spells  out  the  name  of 
Tucker,  the  first  letter  is  T.  This  is  symbolic  of  China, 
whose  principal  export  is  "  T.'*  This  indicates  that  Tucker 
was  composed,  "  a  big  sixth  of  him,"  according  to  the  first 
capital  letter  of  his  name,  of  "  Chinese  corpuscles,"  i.e.,  that 
he  had  much  of  the  Chinese  character  in  him.  But  the 
Chinese  are  characterized  by  conscientiousness  and  so 
Tucker,  having  so  strong  an  element  of  this  quality  in  him, 
would  not  be  likely  to  be  guilty  of  the  act  for  which  he 
suffered,  unless,  indeed,  the  other  letters  of  his  name  should 
offset  the  good  influence  of  the  first  one.  R  represents 
riches,  money,  a  "  driving  principle,"  that  might  operate 
for  evil.  E  is  for  English,  French  Protestantism,  i.  e., 
bigotry  or  narrowmindedness.  K  he  brought  into  connec- 


68  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

tion  with  uck,  Kentucky,  hot  Southern  blood,  passion.  C, 
on  the  other  hand,  represents  Christiania,  conscience,  con- 
scientiousness, a  good  influence. 

The  mental  process  in  instances  like  the  above  might 
be  described  as  an  "  over-identification "  of  language 
symbols  with  the  things  they  represent.  For  example, 
the  idea  of  debasement  becomes  so  closely  identified  with 
"  walk  on,"  that  wherever  a  process  denoted  by  "  walk 
on  "  occurs,  it  carries  with  it  this  idea  of  debasement.  In 
Will-i-am,  the  language  symbol  of  will  is  so  overidenti- 
fied  with  the  process  of  volition,  that,  when  the  symbol 
occurs  in  a  common  name,  this  name  carries  with  it 
special  powers  of  volition.  (Compare  the  phrase," — is 
my  middle  name.")  As  stated  above,  such  false  identi- 
fications are  characteristic  of  primitive  and  pathological 
autism.14  Further  aspects  of  it  will  be  considered  in 
the  next  chapter. 

In  closing  let  us  briefly  consider  the  relation  of  these 
data  to  our  fundamental  conceptions.  What  is  the  rela- 
tion of  autistic  mechanisms  to  the  use  and  waste  of 
mental  energy?  How  do  these  mechanisms  compare 
with  realistic  thinking  in  their  significance  for  adapta- 
tion to  life? 

"  The  prime  function  of  autism,"  remarks  Bleuler, 
who  originates  the  conception,  "  is  wish-fulfillment." 
The  value  of  autistic  thinking  for  this  purpose  lies  in 
the  facility  with  which,  freed  from  the  bounds  of  reason, 
it  can  afford  the  pleasures  of  mental  wish- fulfillment. 
This  generalization  applies  most  clearly  to  the  patho- 
logical field.  It  is  illustrated  in  the  present  pathological 
material.  By  the  arbitrary  association  of  certain  pho- 

14  Good  parallels  could  be  found  in  some  of  the  astrological  argu- 
tients,  particularly  in  the  dream-book  type  of  perversions. 


USE  AND  WASTE  69 

netic  similarities,  P  and  F  are  able  satisfactorily  to 
rationalize  the  ideas  of  their  supreme  importance  to  the 
world's  affairs.  S  makes  them  confirm  his  persecutory 
ideas. 

In  the  folklore  material  the  wish-fulfillment  does  not 
appear  on  the  surface.  We  do  not  understand  why  the 
Malagasy  warrior  should  want  to  avoid  kidneys.  The 
"  shot "  idea  may  be  a  rationalization  of  some  other 
cause  for  avoiding  them,  but  we  do  not  know  what  it  is. 
The  modern  warrior  is  symbolically  "  shot  "  to  make  him 
less  fearful  of  bullets. 

In  all  these  cases  the  autistic  mechanism  of  phonetic 
association  opposes  adaptation  to  life.  It  helps  to  de- 
prive the  Malagasy  warrior  of  a  useful  article  of  food, 
to  keep  the  natives  of  Celebes  word-hunting  when  they 
might  be  head-hunting,  to  support  the  most  absurd  bio- 
logical and  economic  notions  in  the  realm  of  mental 
pathology. 

Yet  this  is  a  one-sided  view  of  a  small  part  of  the 
field.  These  phonetic  associations  have  still  a  humble 
role  of  social  usefulness  in  the  sphere  of  wit.  The  es- 
sential thing  is  that  we  do  not  use  a  mental  mechanism 
suited  merely  for  purposes  of  wit,  as  a  guide  to  important 
actions  in  life.  The  proper  regulation  of  our  thinking 
demands  that  the  merely  mental  satisfactions  be  not  ob- 
tained at  the  sacrifice  of  deeper  organic  needs.  Autistic 
modes  of  thinking  hardly  belong  in  the  chase,  in  the  tilling 
of  the  soil,  in  the  conduct  of  commerce,  industry  and 
warfare.  Autistic  modes  of  thinking  have  controlled 
and  hampered  them  among  barbarous  races.  Enlight- 
ened communities  bring  all  these  activities  more  and  more 
under  the  wisdom  of  experience.  Autistic  modes  of 
thinking  belong  in  the  creations  of  music,  of  painting, 


70  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

of  poetry,  of  imaginative  literature  of  all  sorts.  Nearly 
all  advertising  makes  use  of  them.  They  will  always 
govern  the  realms  of  fantasy  and  of  wit.  Religion  co*dd 
not  exist  without  them.  And  in  the  field  of  knowledge, 
truth  becomes  known  by  means  which  are  not  logical, 
and  is  confirmed  as  realistic  thinking  by  its  ability  to 
meet  the  test  of  experience.  New  truth  may  come  to 
light  through  autistic  modes  of  thought  ("intuition"), 
precisely  because  autistic  thinking  is  not  bound  by  or 
subject  to  our  incomplete  experience  of  the  past.  Truth 
does  not  depend  wholly  on  logical  discovery.  The  Mis- 
sourian  does  not  excel  the  man  who  can  see  things  with- 
out being  "  shown."  Thus  the  role  of  autistic  thinking 
is  often  salutary  as  well  as  important.  We  know  that 
"  dirt  "  is  only  "  matter  out  of  place,"  and  the  mental 
refuse  of  pathological  autism  is  only  "  thought  out  of 
place."  Mental  evolution  can  very  well  be  formulated  in 
terms  of  adjusting  the  realistic  and  autistic  modes  of 
thought  to  their  rightful  spheres. 

One  might  sum  it  all  up  by  saying  that  realistic  think- 
ing contributes  mainly  to  making  it  possible  to  exist,  and 
autistic  thinking  to  making  it  worth  while  to  live. 

l\  <*?  t>  cV  I  ^  t  I 


* 


CHAPTER  III 

SYMBOLIC   ASSOCIATION 

THE  sign  §  is  the  symbol  for  the  weight  of  an  ounce, 
and  represents  the  real  ounce.  We  do  not  demand  any 
logical  connection  between  the  particular  symbol  and  the 
weight.  We  can  at  once  accept  it  as  standing  for  the 
weight  as  a  useful,  if  arbitrary,  symbol.  The  letters 
o-u-n-c-e  are  just  as  much  a  symbol  for  the  weight  as  is 
the  sign  3.  M  is  a  symbol  for  meter  in  measures  of 
length,  and  the  letters  m-e-t-e-r  are  in  turn  symbolic  —  ar- 
bitrarily or  "  conventionally  " —  of  the  length  of  a  certain 
rod  which  is  kept  in  Paris.  A  thing  is  a  symbol  of  some- 
thing else,  when  for  some  convenient  purpose,  it  is  identi- 
fied with,  used  identically  with,  that  something  else.  A 
greenback  is  symbolic  of  metal  in  the  treasury,  and  can  be 
identified  with  the  metal  for  the  purpose  of  buying  some- 
thing. But  it  would  be  an  unsound  procedure  to  carry 
the  identification  so  far  as  to  try  to  plate  another  piece  of 
metal  with  the  greenback ;  or  to  revert  to  the  case  cited 
in  the  preceding  chapter,  T  properly  symbolizes  the  begin- 
ning of  the  name  Tucker,  but  not  a  country  whose  prin- 
cipal export  is  tea.  Such  are  useful  and  wasteful, 
normal  and  pathological  symbolisms.  The  tendency 
toward  symbolism,  and  toward  certain  types  of  it,  is 
one  of  the  distinctive  manifestations  of  "  autistic  think- 
ing." 

Most  of  our  intellectual  life  is  carried  on  by  means  of 

71 


7»  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

symbols.     Dean  Swift  suggested  what  existence  would 
be  without  them : 

At  the  grand  academy  of  Lagado,  in  the  country  of 
Laputa,  there  was  a  project,  "  that  since  words  are  only 
names  of  things,  it  would  be  more  convenient  for  all  men  to 
carry  about  with  them  such  things  as  are  necessary  to  ex- 
press the  particular  business  they  are  to  discourse  on  ... 
which  has  only  this  inconvenience,  that  if  a  man's  business 
be  very  great  ...  he  must  be  obliged  in  proportion  to  carry 
a  greater  bundle  of  things  upon  his  back  ...  I  have  often 
beheld  two  of  these  sages  almost  sinking  under  the  weight 
of  their  packs  .  .  .  who  when  they  met  in  the  street  would 
lay  down  their  loads,  open  their  sacks,  and  hold  conversation 
for  an  hour  together;  then  put  up  their  implements,  help 
each  other  resume  their  burdens,  and  take  their  leave." 

The  use  of  language,  replacing  any  such  cumbrous 
means  of  conveying  ideas,  is  the  most  important  function 
of  symbolism.  Nothing  can  have  contributed  more  to 
mental  evolution  than  the  exchange  and  cross- fertiliza- 
tion of  ideas  which  the  symbols  of  language  make  possi- 
ble. Words  are  the  coins  which  symbolize  ideas,  just 
as  money  denotes  values.1  A  short  discussion  of  the 
range  of  symbolism  in  language,  where  its  service  is 
plainest,  will  help  to  follow  its  course  through  other, 
sometimes  less  open,  fields  to  be  explored. 

The  origin  of  language-symbols  is  to  be  found  in 
psychology  and  not  in  philology;  just  as  concepts  of  the 
origin  of  life  belong  to  biology  rather  than  to  paleon- 
tology. Although  the  question  has  been  considered 
mainly  by  philologists,  the  consideration  has  always  been 
from  a  psychological  standpoint.  Three  principal 
origins  of  language  have  been  postulated: 

First,  that  the  names  given  to  objects  may  have  been 
derived  from  sounds  naturally  associated  with  them,  espe- 
1  See  Sumner,  "  Folkways,"  179. 


SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION  73 

cially  sounds  produced  by  the  objects  named.  (Ono- 
matopoeia, "Bowwow"  theory.)  The  names  of  birds 
and  insects  often  show  this  origin:  chickadee,  whippoor- 
will,  katydid,  cricket,  etc.  It  is  possible  that  the  sound 
association  need  not  be  so  constant  and  direct  as  in  the 
above  cases.  Occasional  and  even  chance  associations  of 
some  sound  with  an  object  or  phenomenon  might  give 
rise  to  a  name,  thus  greatly  extending  the  application  of 
this  theory. 

Second,  certain  affective  reactions  provoke  motor  re- 
sponses  through  the  vocal  organs.  ("Pooh-pooh" 
theory.)  Interjections  still  preserve  this  primitive 
mechanism;  but  words  of  this  origin  are  now  but  rarely 
to  be  traced  in  the  living  grammatical  structure  of  the 
language. 

A  third  mechanism,  which  is  more  hypothetical  than 
the  other  two,  supposes  some  association  between  the  ob- 
ject and  a  definite  vocal  response,  though  the  two  have 
not  been  experienced  in  direct  association.  That  is,  just 
as  the  knee  jerks  on  tapping  the  kneecap, without  its  ever 
having  been  tapped  before,  so  there  might  be  a  vocal 
response  which  would  give  a  name  to  an  object,  though 
the  vocable  and  object  had  not  been  experienced  together. 
("  Dj^gr-flnnpr "  theory.)  A  negative  argument  for  this 
theory  is  that  there  are  many  objects  and  phenomena 
whose  associations  with  any  sound  are  not  frequent 
enough  or  characteristic  enough  to  give  rise  to  a  name. 
A  positive  reason  for  the  theory  is  that  in  the  language 
of  children,  neologisms  sometimes  occur,  with  perfectly 
distinct  meanings.  These  meanings  have  no  traceable 
sound-association  with  tfaeir  object!  e  p-..  a  child  calls  the 
little  whip  holder  on  the  side  of  a  buggy  a  conger. 

Above  all  one  must  not  suppose  that  language  arose 


74  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

by  any  special  act  of  creation  which  no  longer  operates. 
All  the  mental  processes  by  which  language  originated 
are  still  operative.  New  language  is  daily  being  created 
by  the  same  associative  processes  through  which  the  first 
words  arose. 

Once  a  fair  number  of  words  were  thus  established, 
the  formation  of  compounds  would  begin,  parts  of  speech 
would  develop,  and  the  processes  of  agglutination,  inflec- 
tion, etc.,  would  develop  in  due  course.  Upon  this  phase 
of  the  subject,  comparative  philology  sheds  abundant 
light. 

In  sum,  ideas  come  to  have  names,  i.  e.  develop  lan- 
guage-symbols, through  association  of  vocal  sounds  with 
them.  The  problem  of  the  origin  of  language  is  to  de- 
termine the  nature  of  such  associations.  They  may  have 
been  of  several  kinds.  The  "  bowwow,"  "  pooh-pooh," 
and  "  ding-dong  "  theories  are  not  to  be  considered  as 
mutually  exclusive.  This  elementary  process,  by  which 
an  idea  derives  a  name,  or  vocal  symbol,  through  a  sound 
especially  associated  with  it,  we  may  call  a  primary  lin- 
guistic symbolism.  It  is  the  essential  symbolism  of  all 
speech. 

Obviously  it  would  happen  that  two  ideas,  one  or  both 
of  which  already  have  a  name,  are  associated  together 
with  a  special  intimacy;  e.g.,  the  kettle  and  the  water 
which  it  contains.  By  the  same  process  the  idea  kettle 
often  replaces  in  speech  the  water  it  contains,  and  we 
say,  "  the  kettle  boils."  The  word  kettle  has  become  a 
symbol  for  the  water  in  the  kettle.  Later  we  shall  see 
that  other  figures  of  speech  are  forms  of  such  symbolism. 
These  cases  in  which  the  symbol  is  derived  from  a  word 
already  possessing  a  meaning  form  a  secondary  variety  of 
linguistic  symbolism. 


SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION  75 

The  pronouns,  a  pervasive  development  in  language,  have 
a  special  position.  They  are  symbols  whose  meanings  are 
not  fixed;  what  they  symbolize  is  determined  entirely  by 
their  context.  They  are  short  vocables,  and  make  for  econ- 
omy, at  least  in  speaking  effort.  The  saving  of  mental 
energy  must,  however,  be  their  more  important  function. 
If  one  says  Charles  -went  home,  the  word  Charles  brings  up 
many  associations  connected  with  the  person  of  Charles 
which  are  irrelevant  to  the  central  fact  of  his  going  home. 
If  one  says  he  went  home,  it  being  evident  that  Charles  is 
meant,  these  irrelevant  associations  are  more  remote,  and 
the  central  fact  of  his  going  home  is  allowed  to  stand  out 
more  clearly.  The  raison  d'etre  of  the  pronoun  is  that  it 
saves  a  number  of  irrelevant  associations  which  would  dis- 
turb the  perception  of  the  central  idea.  No  similar  develop- 
ment seems  to  have  occurred  with  "  pro-verbs,"  though  in 
the  English  language,  this  service  is  partly  performed  by  the 
phrase,  to  do  so. 

It  appears  that  any  process  of  association  may  cause 
one  thing  to  be  used  as  a  symbol  of  another.  Every 
"  law  of  association "  is  also  a  principle  of  symbol- 
ism. 

The  simplest  symbolic  associations  are  those  bv^  simi- 
larity in  sound,  already  discussed  from  another  angle. 
Those  familiar  with  baseball  will  recall  the  elaborations 
of  "foul" — "fowl"  Fit  as  a  fiddle  is  another  com- 
mon instance  of  this  kind  of  association  and  symbolism; 
the  fiddle  has  no  special  title  to  fitness  other  than  its 
sound.  Another  sound  association,  of  a  less  direct  type, 
is  the  use  of  the  word  squealer  to  designate  one  who  be- 1 
trays  his  companions.  An  accepted  source  of  the  squeal , 
is  the  pig ;  thus,  in  the  underworld,  squealer  becomes 
further  symbolized  to  pig's  head.  Another  term  for  such 
a  traitor  is  pipe;  perhaps  simply  as  a  conveyor,  or  be- 
cause, in  music,  a  pipe-like  instrument  may  emit  a  squeal. 
The  symbolic  fate  of  the  squealer  is  then  to  be  put  under 


76  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

the  sink  with  the  rest  of  the  pipes,  i.  e.,  to  pass  out  of 
sight. 

Words  thus  come  to  have,  not  only  their  primary  mean- 
ings, but  other  meanings  which  happen  to  be  associated 
with  the  primary  ones.  The  word  head  means  a  part  of 
the  body,  the  chief  of  a  group,  a  topic.  The  original 
significance  of  the  word  may  be  lost ;  many  etymological 
descendants  of  caput  have  no  reference  to  the  head  that 
rests  on  shoulders.  A  complete  list  of  instances  would 
form  a  large  collection ;  many  may  be  gathered  from  any 
discussion  of  so-called  "  semantic  change."  Interesting 
is  the  following  citation  (from  Jung)  of  various  mean- 
ings, all  of  which  are  distinctly  associated,  for  the  San- 
skrit word  tejas: 

I.  Sharpness,  edge.  2.  Fire,  brightness,  light,  glow,  heat. 
3.  Healthy  appearance,  beauty.  4.  The  fiery  and  pigment- 
producing  power  in  the  human  organism  (believed  to  reside 
in  the  bile).  5.  Strength,  energy,  vital  force.  6.  Violence. 

7.  Spiritual,  also  magic,  power,  influence,  good  appearance, 
dignity.    8.  Semen.2 

We  speak  of  certain  meanings  of  words  as  literal,  and 
other  meanings  as  figurative.  Thus  head  as  a  part  of 

2  A  fuller  list  from  Apte's  Dictionary  (1890)  is  as  follows: 

I.  Sharpness.    2.  The  sharp  edge  (of  a  knife,  etc.).    3.  The  point 

or  top  of  a  flame.    4.  Heat,  glow,  glare.    5.  Luster,  glow,  brilliance, 

splendor.    6.  Heat  or  light,  considered  as  the  third  of  the  five  elements 

of  creation.    7.  The  bright  appearance  of  the  human  body,  beauty, 

8.  Fire  of  energy.    9.  Might,  power,  strength,  valor,  martial  or  heroic 
luster.     10.  One  possessed  of  heroic  luster,     ir.  Spirit,  energy.     12. 
Strength  of  character,  not  bearing  insult  or  ill  treatment  with  im- 
punity.    13.  Majestic  luster,  majesty,  dignity,  authority,  consequence. 
14.  Semen,  seed?  semen  virile.     15.  The  essential  nature  of  anything. 
16.  Essence,  quintessence.    17.  Spiritual,  moral,  or  magical  power. 
18.  Fire.    19.  Marrow.    20.  Bile.    21.  The    speed    of    a    horse.    22. 
Fresh  butter.    23.  Gold.    24.  Clearness  of  the  eyes.    25.  A  shiny  or 
luminous  body,  light.    26.  The  heating  and  strengthening  faculty  of 
the  human  frame  seated  in  the  bile.    27.  The  brain.    28.  Violence, 
fierceness.    29.  Impatience.     (For  this  material  I  am  indebted  to  Pro- 
fessor Jackson,  of  Columbia  University.) 


SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION  77 

the  body  is  used  in  its  literal  sense;  as  chief  of  a  group, 
in  a  figurative  sense.  The  literal  sense  is  analogous  to 
the  primary  symbolism;  the  figurative  sense  to  the  sec- 
ondary symbolism. 

Examples  from  Hill's  Rhetoric  are: 
LITERAL  ASSOCIATION  FIGURATIVE  ASSOCIATION 

mirror  reflect  mind 

river  source  information 

bird  flight  fancy 

The  simile  and  the  metaphor  are  bald  statements  of 
symbolisms  based  on  associations  by  similarity.  A  pro- 
fusion of  instances  of  symbolisms  may  be  taken  from 
current  slang:  Up  a  tree,  out  on  the  edge  of  a  limb, 
buffaloed,  live  wire,  pinched,  beggar,  perisher,  etc.  The 
varieties  of  metonymy  and  synecdoche  show  similar  cor- 
respondence witn  associative  mechanisms.  Thus  the  re- 
lations, part-whole,  genus-species,  cause-effect,  not  only 
exemplify  figures  of  speech,  but  are  categories  which 
appear  prominently  in  experimental  studies  of  the  associ- 
ative processes.  The  figures  of  speech  correspond  to 
secondary  varieties  of  linguistic  symbolism.  They  are 
interesting  in  showing  the  many  forms  of  association 
through  which  symbols  are  established. 

We  need  not  pursue  further  this  review  of  the  possible 
relations  between  the  symbol  and  its  object.  So  far  as 
can  be  seen,  the  association  does  not  have  to  be  of  any 
particular  type.  Any  two  things  which  are  associated  in 
the  mind  may  become  symbols,  one  of  the  other.  It  may 
be  through  an  association  by  contiguity,  similarity,  part- 
whole,  genus-species,  or  what  not.  This  appears  true 
both  of  language  symbols,  and  of  other  symbols  to  be 
discussed,  such  as  those  derived  from  sympathetic  magic 
and  dreams. 


78  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

In  order  that  a  symbolism  may  be  established,  there 
must  first  be  an  association  of  some  kind.  But  all  things 
associated  do  not  form  symbols.  In  addition  to  this 
underlying  condition  of  symbolism,  there  must  be 
dynamic  factors  or  motives  of  symbolism  —  a  mental 
gain  resulting  from  it. 

The  rhetorician  explains  that  symbolism  effects  a  men- 
tal economy,  that  we  are  stimulated  and  pleased  to  follow 
the  skillful  tracery  of  these  various  kinds  of  association. 
This  seems  to  explain  sufficiently  why  figures  of  speech 
occur  as  above.  But  the  tendency  to  form  symbols  seems 
also  to  affect  special  classes  of  ideas;  or  rather  ideas 
which  have  special  significance  to  the  person  who  holds 
them.  Illustrations  are  found  in  linguistic  symbols,  be- 
cause the  same  principles  operate  in  symbolism  generally 
as  in  the  symbols  of  language. 

The  prime  condition  favoring  the  formation  of  sym- 
bols in  language  and  other  mental  products  is  that  the 
idea  shall  have  more  than  the  average  interest  for  the 
person.  Classes  of  ideas  which  are  of  general  human 
interest,  like  religion  and  love,  have  filled  the  world  with 
their  symbols.  Specific  words  (resp.  ideas)  that  fall  into 
some  category  of  general  interest,  and  are  frequently 
employed,  show  marked  tendency  to  take  on  symbolic 
forms.  The  dollar,  for  example,  appears  as  plunk,  bone, 
buck,  piece  of  lettuce,  simoleon,  iron  man,  etc.  Perhaps 
the  usual  word  brings  up  a  disagreeable  feeling  of  trite- 
ness which  is  avoided  by  the  use  of  some  more  novel 
association.  The  genial  hero  of  Mutt  and  Jeff  would 
have  reformed  altogether  rather  than  have  wagered  mere 
dollars  on  the  race  track.  He  dealt  in  pesos,  great  big 
round  ones,  seeds,  pieces  of  the  monetary  unit,  joy- 
getters. 


SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION  79 

The  same  feeling  of  triteness,  or,  perhaps,  "  desire  to 
astonish  "  with  an  unexpected  and  individual  expression, 
brings  about  a  number  of  slang  terms  for  articles  of 
food,  e.  g.,  hot  dog  (Frankfurter  sausage),  pair  of  white 
wings  wid  de  sunny  side  up  (poached  eggs),  cannibal 
sandwich  (beefsteak  tartare),  three  diamond  studs  (por- 
tion of  Hamburger  steak). 

Again,  words  expressing  unpleasant  ideas  are  particu-  1 
larly  apt  to  find  symbolic  equivalents.     Bereaved  per- 
sons frequently  do  not  say  that  their  lost  one  died,  but 
that  he  went  away.     Fell  asleep  is  often  used  with  the 
same  meaning.     To  go  out  is  an  equivalent  used  espe- 
cially by  attendants  on  the  sick.     The  fact  that  death  may 
not  be  wholly  unpleasant  either  to  the  subject  or  the 
survivors  is  reflected  in  the  note  of  humor  carried  by 
some  of  its  symbolic  equivalents,  like  passed  in  his  checks,  __ 
or  the  German  abgekratzt. 

The  anciently  recognized  and  familiar  stars  are  still 
symbolized  by  personifying  names;  others  are  identified 
by  number  only.  In  general,  if  there  is  a  group  whose 
members  are  to  be  identified,  symbolic  names  are  used 
where  there  is  marked  individuality ;  otherwise,  numbers. 
A  country  estate  may  well  have  a  special  name ;  less  fre- 
quently the  city  house.  When  locomotives  were  a  more 
distinctive  feature  in  human  life,  they  had  special  names; 
now  they  have  only  numbers.  Merchant  vessels  and 
large  men-of-war  regularly  have  names ;  scows,  tugs,  and 
torpedo  craft  are  frequently  numbered.  American  sub- 
marines used  to  have  names,  but  are  now  known  by 
letter  and  number. 

Interest  (whether  positive  or  negative)  and  distinction 
in  the  main  determine  what  associations  shall  develop 
into  symbolisms.  Words  denoting  ideas  of  interest  and 


80 

distinction  have  the  greater  tendency  to  be  replaced  by 
symbolic  equivalents. 

The  use  of  a  symbol  may  be  to  express  the  fact  of 
distinction.  A  thing  which  stands  out  prominently  calls 
for  a  special  symbol  in  language  to  identify  it.  Such 
are  the  great  stars,  steamships,  mountains,  and  the  early 
locomotives.  Again,  the  application  of  a  symbol  may 
be  to  create  distinction  where  it  does  not  sufficiently 
exist.  To  this  class  belong  others  of  the  examples 
quoted,  like  those  for  hotels,  or  for  some  kinds  of  food. 
The  trade  name  is  an  effort  to  provide  distinction  for  an 
article  by  giving  it  a  novel  identifying  symbol.  A 
Trilby  sandwich  is  made  out  of  a  "  Frankfurter,"  a  roll, 
and  a  bit  of  mustard  pickle.  Symbols  are  thus  used  on 
the  one  hand  to  express  distinction,  on  the  other  hand  to 
confer  it. 

Positive  interest,  or  attraction,  and  negative  interest, 
or  repulsion,  each  induce  the  formation  of  symbols,  but 
in  opposite  ways.  The  lover  sees  his  passion  reflected  in 
everything  from  the  wooing  of  doves  to  the  courses  of 
complementary  stars.  Every  idea  which  comes  into  sym- 
bolic association  with  his  love  becomes  of  itself  pleasant 
for  him  to  contemplate.  Thus  he  clings  to  the  pleasant 
thought  of  love  and  permits  it  to  enter  into  all  kinds  of  as- 
sociations. Through  positive  interest  he  makes  a  world 
of  erotic  symbols  to  magnify  and  extend  the  pleasantness 
of  the  original  idea.  Great  positive  interest  also  magnifies 
the  desire  for  distinction.  The  combined  role  of  the  two 
factors  in  giving  rise  to  symbols  is  well  shown  in  the 
many  half-technical,  half-slang  equivalents  for  baseball 
topics. 

Symbolism  arising  from  negative  interest,  on  the  other 
hand,  uses  the  symbol  as  a  means  of  escape  from  an  un- 


SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION  81 

pleasant  on'g1'"^  ir1^*  Speech  disguises  many  facts  of 
life  which  are  felt  to  be  unpleasant,  by  euphemisms.  A 
euphemism  is  not  necessarily  symbolic.  If  we  say  of 
a  deceased  person,  he  ceased  to  live,  that  is  circumlocu- 
tion only,  because  it  expresses  exactly  the  same  fact,  only 
in  a  less  direct  way.  It  is  a  simple  euphemism.  If  on 
the  other  hand  we  say,  as  above,  he  went  away,  the  ordi- 
nary meaning  of  this  is  something  different  from  he  died, 
and  we  may  call  this  a  symbolic  euphemism.  Simple 
euphemism  states  the  same  fact,  but  in  a  more  delicate 
way;  symbolic  euphemism  uses  words  which  ordinarily 
convey  a  different  meaning  of  some  sort. 

Symbolism  arising  from  negative  interest  is  obviously 
not  intended  to  make  the  unpleasant  ideas  any  plainer 
or  more  distinctive;  it  is  rather  to  disguise  them  or  make 
them  vaguer.  Thus  we  can  understand  how  it  is  that 
the  process  pervading  nearly  all  linguistic  symbolism  of 
this  kind  is  one  of  further  generalising  the  idea  to  be  con- 
veyed. In  experiments  on  the  associative  pfWCSS,  thfi 
corresponding  class  of  associations  is  called  supra^grdi- 
nates.  That  is,  the  response  animal  to  the  stimulus 
word  sheep  would  be  a  supra-ordinate  association.  It  has 
been  regarded  as  showing  an  inferior  adaptation  to  the 
experiment.  However,  we  are  under  no  necessity  of  call- 
ing a  sheep  an  animal  in  language,  because  there  is  noth- 
ing repulsive  to  us  about  a  sheep;  but  a  bedbug  is  al- 
luded to  simply  as  a  bug.3  Where,  on  the  other  hand, 
a  positive  interest  applies,  the  insect  is  sometimes  parti- 
cularized as  Virginia  creeper.  Any  ideas  that  are  thus 

8  In  a  southern  district  the  word  bull  is  tabu,  and  must  be  replaced 
by  male  brute.  Generalization  may  be  seen  where  there  is  no  tabu, 
like  the  sack,  bag,  stick  of  baseball.  But  where  there  is  a  tabu,  gen- 
eralizing symbols  are  the  rule.  Sowing  wild  oats  is  one  of  the  few 
exceptions. 

7 


82  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

at  once  interesting  and  more  or  less  under  tabu  are 
apt  to  develop  two  classes  of  symbols  in  modern  speech. 

I  One  represents  the  yielding  to  the  tabu,  and  giving  the 
idea  a  vaguer  symbol.  Thus  if  a  person  is  dismissed 
from  employment  we  say  that  he  left  his  position.  The 
other  class  represents  rather  a  defiance  of  the  tabu.  By 
this  token  it  is  said  of  the  former  employee  that  he  got 
through,  got  the  sack,  got  the  g.  b.  This  type  of  sym- 
bolism is  especially  apt  to  have  a  humorous  coloring.4 

If  a  person  is  drunk  we  describe  him  by  generalizing 
symbols  as  intoxicated,  or  under  the  influence  ofjiguor. 
On  the  other  hand,  alcoholism  is  quite  apt  to  give  rise  to 
humorous  and  contemptuous  interest.  An  especially  full 
collection  of  the  symbols  thus  arising  has  been  published 
by  Partridge.  They  are  interesting  here,  to  show  the 
variety  of  associative  processes  through  which  symbolism 
may  establish  itself.  Some  of  them  are : 

A    passenger    in    the      clear  glorified 

Cape   Ann    Stage         disguised  in  a  difficulty 

artificial  down  with  the  barrel  loaded  for  bears 

at  rest  fever  making     m's     and 

been  lappingthe  gutter      drunk  as  a  drum,  fish,         w's 

been  in  the  sun  fly,  mouse,  owl,  rat,  on  the  nipple 

been  taking  tea  sow  rococo 

brick  in  the  hat  edge  on  society  slant  on 

canonized  (shot)  electrified  starchy 

feels  his  oats  stewed 
whittled 

Among  the  considerable  number  of  neologisms  are  the 
following : 

buffy  iskimmish  smeekit 

coxy-loxy  kisky  smoled 

cronk  nazie  stropolus 

fogmatic  obfusticated  transmogrified 
groatable 

4  "  Everything  which  breaks  over  the  social  taboo  is  funny."  Sum- 
ner,  "  Folkways,"  573. 


SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION  8S 

Very  few  of  these  would  be  widely  understood,  be- 
cause the  interest  that  gives  rise  to  them  is  largely  in- 
cidental. The  tabu  on  alcoholism  is  comparatively  weak, 
not  strong  enough  to  give  rise  to  many  generalizing  sym- 
bols such  as  liquor  or  strong  drink.  The  tabu  is  much 
more  intense,  and  the  positive  interest  greater  and  more 
universal  in  the  field  of  sexuality.  Its  ideas  are  everv 
present  to  humanity  and  are  of  the  intensest  concern. 
The  interest  is  both  positive  and  negative,  for  both  pleas- 
ant and  unpleasant  affects  of  great  strength  are  associ- 
ated with  it.  Hence  we  find  both  the  generalizing  and 
the  particularizing  types  of  symbols  in  wide  variety.  All 
the  important  motives  of  symbolism  are  present.  These 
generalizing  symbols  are  a  part  of  the  sex  tabu : 

bad  immoral 

bad  disease  lamb's  fries 

blood  disease  (to)  lie  with 

delicate  condition  manhood 

diseases  peculiar  to  men  member 

dread  malady  organ 

dress  yourself  (on  which  side)  privates 

family  way  safe  (-ty) 

(to)  force  self-abuse 

go  with  women  self-pollution 

grave  charges  unusual  charges 

A  small  number  of  jokes  are  founded  on  the  theme  of 
a  vague  or  unfamiliar  word  being  mistakenly  interpreted 
in  a  sexual  sense  by  the  hearer. 

Under  many  conditions,  as  among  ordinary  men  inti- 
mately acquainted,  the  tabu  is  practically  lifted  so  far  as 
language  is  concerned.  Then,  as  with  the  terms  for 
alcoholism,  motives  of  interest  and  distinction  carry  the 
symbols  for  sexual  ideas  almost  to  the  limits  of  associ- 
ative capacity.  On  the  other  hand,  the  tabu  upon  these  is 


84  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

*  4  V  .  •"«-. 

particularly  intense  in  "  polite  "  society.  There  is  in  the 
recognized  English  language  no  transitive  verb  denoting 
sexual  intercourse  between  willing  persons.  Under  the 
tabu  there  are  three,  commonly  understood  and  regularly 
employed.  There  are  about  nine  such  commonly  under- 
stood words  for  the  male  organ,  but  not  more  than  three 
or  four  for  the  female.  As  in  the  alcohol  symbolisms, 
the  number  in  occasional  use  is  indefinite.  Neologisms 
and  proper  names  are  frequently  employed  as  designa- 
tions. As  in  Partridge's  list  for  alcoholism,  most  of  the 
words  have  a  different  literal  meaning  which  is  not  under 
tabu,  thus  belonging  to  the  class  we  have  called  "  sec- 
ondary symbols  "  for  the  thing  denoted.  One  of  these  is 
in  some  districts  used  to  designate  the  male  organ  and  in 
others  the  female. 

<**  Among  uncultivated  peoples,  language  tabu  markedly 
affects  many  other  ideas.  One  may  see  the  same  gen- 
eralizing, supra-ordinate  mechanism  at  work.  Under  the 
conditions  in  which  the  tabu  is  operative,  smallpox  be- 
comes, like  syphilis  with  us,  bad  disease  (British  East 
Africa).  A  snake  becomes  creeping  thing  (Bengal)  ; 
a  long  animal  (Malacca).  A  thief  becomes  the  unzvel- 
come  visitor  (Bengal)  ;  an  elephant,  the  great  animal 
(Malacca).  A  hare  is  called  the  four-footed  one;  he  that 
hides  in  the  rocks  (So.  India).  The  "camphor  lan- 
guage," 5  a  secret  dialect  of  the  Malay  peninsula,  makes 
of  rice,  grass  fruit,  and  of  a  gun,  far-sounding.  Rice 
reapers  may  not  call  each  other  by  their  proper  names, 
but  only  by  the  nonspecific  man,  girl,  old  man,  old  woman 
(Sumatra).  "Noun-amnesia"  is  partly  simulated  in  a 

6  Must  be  used  while  camphor  is  being  gathered,  even  by  those 
not  actually  engaged  in  doing  so,  to  propitiate  the  tutelary  spirit  of 
the  camphor  trees.  Frazer,  "  Taboo  and  the  Perils  of  the  Soul " 
(1914),  405. 


SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION  85 

secret  language  of  Celebes,  in  which  the  hand  is  that  with 
which  one  reaches,  the  ear  is  that  with  which  one  hears, 
a  gun  is  fire-producer.  Here  is  the  same  tendency  to  get 
away  from  the  tabu  association  by  using  a  vaguer  term 
for  the  idea. 

The  particularizing  symbols  in  these  observations  do 
not  show  the  half -humorous,  half-contemptuous  character 
illustrated  in  modern  slang.  Instead,  indifferent  or  flat- 
tering terms  are  employed.  If  a  person  is  bitten  by  a 
snake,  the  Cherokee  says  he  has  been  scratched  by  a  briar; 
just  as  in  contemporary  speech  a  local  designation  for 
stepping  in  cow  dung  is  to  cut  one's  foot.  If  a  snake  is 
called  a  strap,  it  will  lie  still  (Herero).  Under  the  tabu, 
salt  must  be  called  sweet  peppers  (Madagascar) ;  boars 
must  be  called  handsome  men  (Java)  ;  smallpox  is  termed 
pretty  girl  (Java),  the  prince  of  the  averters  of  misfor- 
tune (Sumatra),  or,  indifferently,  grains  of  corn  (British 
East  Africa).  (Frazer.) 

Some  of  these  symbolisms  are  rationalized  by  way  of 
propitiation  of  superior  or  evil  powers,  or  of  keeping  a 
necessary  secret.  For  example,  the  "  noun-amnesic " 
language  of  Celebes  is  said  to  be  used  to  prevent  the 
rice  crop  from  knowing  what  is  to  be  done  to  it.  In 
others  no  rationalization  is  traced. 

In  the  fable,  not  a  single  idea,  but  a  short  system  of 
coordinated  ideas  is  symbolized.  Abstract  and  general 
principles  are  expressed  by  such  concrete  symbols  as  the 
dog  crossing  the  stream  with  meat  in  his  mouth,  or  the 
fox  who  invites  the  crane  to  dinner.  When  the  system  of 
ideas  symbolized  becomes  more  complex,  it  is  called  a 
parable  or  an  allegory.  They  serve  to  make  the  symbols 
more  vivid  by  putting  them  in  a  setting  with  other  symbols 
to  reinforce  them.  An  exquisite  example  twice  occur- 


86  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

ring  in  recent  poetry  is  that  of  the  white  signal  lamps  of 
safety  \velcoming  a  dying  railroad-man  beyond  the  grave. 
.r  Symbols  may  occur  through  any  process  of  association. 
Things  of  the  greatest  interest  are  apt  to  have  the  greatest 
number  of  associations,  or  the  intensest  ones.  Thus, 
ideas  which  are  of  the  greatest  interest,  or  make  the 
greatest  demand  for  distinctive  names,  will  come  to  have 
other  words  stand  for  them.  The  symbolism  may  serve 
to  emphasize  the  pleasant  idea  or  to  disguise  the  unpleas- 
ant one.  We  have  thus  reviewed  the  ways  by  which  in 
language  one  idea  comes  to  stand  for  another  idea,  and 
the  principles  in  other  classes  of  symbolism  are  similar. 

Although  one  speaks  of  the  kettle  boiling,  one  does  not 
identify  the  kettle  with  the  water  in  any  form  of  judgment 
or  conduct,  as  by  trying  to  drink  it.  When  an  idea  sym- 
bolizes another  idea  in  language,  the  symbolism  is  one  of 
words  only.  The  ideas  are  not  identified  in  the  conduct 
of  the  individual.  The  kettle  is  not  a  symbol  of  water  ex- 
cept in  words.  A  flag  is  a  symbol  of  a  higher  order.  It 
represents  its  nation  for  certain  sorts  of  conduct.  Salute 
and  insult  to  it  are  salute  and  insult  to  the  nation.  The 
identification  does  not  go  beyond  this,  however.  If  it  is 
dragged  in  the  dust,  the  nation  is  considered  as  thereby 
insulted,  but  not  as  injured.  All  •symbolism  is  this  identi- 
fication of  one  thing  with  another  to  a  greater  or  less  de- 
gree. This  process  of  identification  extends  until  we  find 
beliefs  that  any  act  performed  upon  the  symbol  is  thereby 
performed  upon  the  thing;  symbolized.  (Sympathetic 
magic. ) 

There  are  obvious  limits  to  which  this  identification  can 
usefully  go.  The  symbolisms  of  language  and  of  the  flag 
are  useful,  those  of  sympathetic  magic  are  wasteful.  To 
introduce  the  psychic  mechanisms  of  symbolism  through 


SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION  87 

the  common  symbols  of  language  has  the  advantage  that 
the  clearest  symbols  are  much  more  numerous  there  than 
elsewhere.     As  students  of  dynamic  psychology,  however,  I 
we  must  leave  this  field  to  consider  instances  in  which  the/ 
identification  begins.tQ,be  reflected,  in.  judgment  and  cou-' 
duct.     This  is  seldom  true  of  linguistic  symbolisms  as 
such ;  but  a  few  such  instances  were  described  in  the  pre- 
vious chapter    (kidney shot,  pp.    57-58).     Where 

judgment  and  conduct  are  affected,  the  symbol  is  usually 
independent  of  its  linguistic  form. 

Braune,  in  his  collection  of  Old  High  German  texts, 
quotes  a  group  of  symbolisms  between  religion  and  natural 
history.  They  are  based  on  associations  by  similarity, 
and  run  in  part  as  follows : 6 

1.  Here  I  begin  a  discourse  about  the  beasts,  what  they 
severally  betoken.     The  lion  betokens  our  Savior  through 
his  strength,  and  thereby  is  often  mentioned  in  the  holy  writ. 
Thus  Jacob  said,  in  naming  his  son  Judas,  "  Judas  my  son 
is  the  whelp  of  the  lion."     The  lion  has  three  things  about 
him  which  symbolize  our  Savior.     One  is  this:     When  he 
goes  in  the  forest  and  smells  the  hunters,  then  he  destroys 
the   track   with  his  claws   so  that  they  do  not  find  him. 
Thus  did  our  Savior,  when  he  was  in  the  world  among  men, 
so  that  the  enemy  should  not  understand  that  he  was  the 
Son  of  God.     Then  when  the  lion  sleeps,  his  eyes  watch. 
But  in  that  they  are  open,  therein  he  betokens  our  Savior, 
who  himself  said  in  the  book  of  Song  of  Songs,  Ego  dormio 
et  cor  menm  vigilat.     That  he  rested  in  the  human  body 
and  waked  in  the  godhead.     \Yhen  the  lioness  brings  forth, 
then  the  little  lion  is  dead,  so  she  keeps  it  until  the  third  day. 
Then  the  father  comes  and  blows  on  it,  and  thus  it  is  brought 
to  life.     So  did  the  Almighty  Father  wake  his  only  begotten 
Son  from  death  on  the  third  day. 

2.  In  the  water  of  the  Nile  is  a  kind  of  serpent  which  is 
called  the  hydra,  and  is  the  enemy  of  the  crocodile.     For  so 

6  Quoted  from  a  contribution  of  the  writer's  to  the  Journal  of 
Philosophy,  Psychology  and  Scientific  Methods.  Cf.  aho  Kelsey, 
"  Physical  Basis  of  Society,"  1917,  p.  157. 


88  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

the  hydra  rolls  herself  in  the  mud,  and  springs  into  his 
mouth  and  slips  into  him.  Then  she  bites  his  inside,  until 
he  dies,  and  she  goes  out  whole.  The  crocodile  betokens 
death  and  hell.  The  hydra  betokens  our  Savior,  who  took 
upon  himself  the  body  of  mankind  thereto  that  he  overthrew 
our  death,  and  vanquished  hell  and  returned  victorious. 

3.  In  the  ocean  are  wonderful  beasts  which  are  called 
sirens  and  onocentaurs.     Sirens  are  mermaids  and  are  like 
women  as  far  as  the  navel  and  from  there  up  like  birds, 
and  should  be  very  beautiful.     When  they  see  men  traveling 
on  the  water,  then  they  sing  very  sweetly  until  they  are  so 
charmed    with    the    exquisite    song   that   they    fall   asleep. 
When  the  mermaid  sees  that,  then  it  goes  in  and  destroys 
them.     Therein  it  betokens  the  enemy,  who  seduces  the  mind 
of  man  to  worldly  lusts.     The  onocentaur  is  half  man  and 
half  ass,  and  betokens  them  who  are  "  ambitendent "  (^nival- 
tic)  in  their  tongues  and  in  their  hearts,  and  have  the  appear- 
ance of  righteousness  yet  do  not  fulfil  it  in  their  deeds. 

4.  A  beast  is  called  the  hyena,  and  is  sometimes  male  and 
sometimes  female,  and  therein  is  very  unclean ;  such  are 
they  who  first  called  upon  Christ  and  then  sought  after  the 
evil  one.     It  betokens  them  who  are  not  unbelieving,  nor 
yet  rightly  believing.     Of  them  said  Solomon,  "  They  who 
are  ambitendent  in  their  hearts  are  also  ambitendent  in  their 
works." 

5.  Also  is  there  an  animal  called  clevas,  that  is  an  ele- 
phant, who  has  great  understanding  upon  him,  and  no  lust 
of  the  flesh.     Thus  when  he  wishes  a  child,  he  goes  with 
his  mate  to  the  field,  where  grows  the  mandrake  that  is  the 
child  plant,  so  the  elephant  eats  the  plant,  and  his  mate, 
and  when  they  come  together  thereafter,  then  she  conceives. 
And  when  she  is  to  bring  forth,  she  goes  to  a  ditch  full  of 
water  and  brings   forth  there.  .  .  .  The  elephant  and  his 
mate  betoken  Adam  and  Eve,  who  were  innocent  until  they 
ate  the  fruit  which  God  forbade  them,  and  were  free  from 
all  unclean  desires.     And  as  soon  as  they  had  eaten  the 
fruit,  they  were  driven  forth  into  the  misery  of  the  present 
existence.     The  ditch  full  of  water  betokens  that  he  said, 
"  Salvum  me  fac,  deus." 

6.  There  is  a  kind  of  snake  called  the  viper,  of  her  phisiol- 
ogus  relates,  that  when  she  is  to  become  pregnant,  .  .  . 
then  she  swallows  the  semen  and  becomes  so  desirous  that 


SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION  89 

she  bites  off  his  genitals,  and  he  straightway  lies  dead. 
Then  when  the  young  have  grown  in  her  womb,  then  they 
bite  through  her  and  thus  go  out.  The  snakes  are  compar- 
able to  the  Jews,  who  polluted  themselves  with  unclean  acts, 
and  persecuted  their  father  Christ,  and  their  mother,  the 
holy  Christianity.  Also  God  commands  us  in  one  of  the 
gospels,  that  we  should  be  as  wise  as  these  same  serpents. 
There  are  three  kinds  of  snakes ;  one  kind,  when  she  becomes 
old,  her  sight  fades;  then  she  fasts  forty  days  and  forty 
nights,  and  all  her  skin  loosens,  then  she  seeks  a  stone  with 
a  hole  in  it,  slips  through,  scrapes  the  skin  off  and  thus 
rejuvenates  herself.  Another  kind  there  is,  that  when  she 
wishes  to  drink,  she  first  spits  out  the  poison.  From  this 
worm  we  should  take  the  example,  that  when  we  are  to 
drink  the  spiritual  water,  that  is  given  to  us  from  the  hand 
of  our  Savior,  we  should  first  spew  out  the  uncleanness 
with  which  we  are  defiled.  The  third  kind  is,  when  she  sees 
the  man  naked,  she  flees  from  him ;  but  if  he  is  clothed,  she 
attacks  him.  So  also  our  father  Adam,  so  long  as  he  was 
naked  in  the  garden  of  Paradise,  the  devil  might  do  nothing 
against  him. 

It  would  seem  as  though  the  false  notions  of  natural 
history  had  been  devised  to  correspond  with  the  religious 
beliefs.  Apparently  the  symbols  are  not  merely  figurative, 
but  imply  the  belief  that  causal  relationship  exists  between 
the  symbol  and  what  it  betokens.  That  is,  the  variable 
sex  of  the  hyena  and  the  variable  dispositions  of  men  are 
regarded  as  part  of  a  single  cosmic  process;  one  produces 
the  other,  or  both  have  the  same  cause.  By  so  much  they 
differ  from  incidental  metaphors. 

The  following  cast,  quoted  by  Scripture,  shows  an  as- 
sociation-mechanism of  much  the  same  type  as  above,  but 
with  clearer  evidence  of  its  influence  upon  judgment.  It 
is  based  upon  a  number-symbolism  applied  to  the  satellites 
of  Jupiter : 

There  are  seven  windows  in  the  head,  two  nostrils,  two 
eyes,  two  ears,  and  a  mouth ;  so  in  the  heavens  there  are  two 


90  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

favorable  stars,  two  unpropitious,  two  luminaries,  and  Mer- 
cury alone  undecided  and  indifferent.  From  which  and 
many  other  similar  phenomena  of  nature,  which  it  were 
tedious  to  enumerate,  we  gather  that  the  number  of  planets 
is  necessarily  seven. 

The  identification  with  seven  is  carried  far  beyond  the 
bounds  of  relevancy.  It  is  "  autistic  thinking  "  of  a 
scarcely  higher  degree  than  that  of  the  Achinese  fisherman 
who  must  not  speak  the  word  for  clear  because  it  might 
enable  the  fish  to  get  "  clear  "of  the  net. 

Every  one  knows  the  fairy  tale  of  "  Rumpelstiltzkin," 
who  was  destroyed  when  the  girl  pronounced  his  right 
name.  Similar  ideas  about  the  name  are  very  widespread. 
The  name  is  so  closely  identified  with  its  owner  that  who- 
ever learns  the  name  can  thereby  exercise  power  over  him. 
For  example,  "  the  Wolofs  of  Senegambia  are  very  much 
annoyed  if  any  one  calls  them  in  a  loud  voice,  even  by 
day;  for  they  say  that  their  name  will  be  remembered  by 
an  evil  spirit  and  made  use  of  by  him  to  do  them  a  mis- 
chief at  night."  Sometimes  it  is  only  that  the  name  must 
not  be  told  by  the  person  owning  it.  The  symbolism  per- 
.  sists  in  modern  speech,  where  we  talk  of  injury  to  a  per- 
son's name.  The  notion  of  power  over  a  person  thus 
acquired,  is  brought  down  to  date  in  the  expression  got 
his  number. 

For  more  complete  forms  of  symbolic  identification  we 
must  turn  to  uncultivated  peoples.  The  uselessness  of  such 
identifications  in  meeting  the  tests  of  experience  is  so  pat- 
ent that  they  do  not  long  survive  in  the  natural  selection  of 
ideas.  Sumner  mentions  how  a  Hindu  had  to  be  married 
to  a  tree  or  a  doll  of  cotton,  before  he  could  marry  a 
widow.7  The  tree  or  doll  symbolizes  a  wife  from  whom 
he  is  widowed  on  his  part. 

7  "  Folkways,"  389.    Cf.  also  393. 


SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION  91 

As  above  with  the  name,  a  great  function  of  identifying 
a  symbol  with  the  thing  symbolized  is,  to  confer  power 
over  the  thing  symbolized.  The  exercise  of  this  power 
is  "  sympathetic  magic."  There  are  two  kinds  of  sym- 
pathetic magic.  Native  Victorians  draw  a  figure  of  their 
enemy  on  the  ground,  and  destroy  him  by  their  incanta- 
tions around  it.  This  is  called  imitative  magic,  and  pro- 

"*"— ~"^"<^™i          ' 
ceeds  through  association  by  similanty7T~e!7trre  similarity 

of  the  figure  to  the  real  person.  It  is  a  pervasive  feature 
of  primitive  mental  life.  Holinshed  gives  the  description 
of  a  Scotch  procedure,  familiar  to  students  of  Macbeth, 
which  includes  all  the  essential  features  (with  some  re- 
ligious admixture) ;  its  quaint  language  makes  it  the  more 
worth  repeating  : 

But  about  that  present  time  there  was  a  murmuring 
amongst  the  people,  how  the  king  was  vexed  with  no  nat- 
urall  sicknesse,  but  by  sorcerie  and  magicall  art,  practised 
by  a  sort  of  witches,  dwelling  in  a  towne  of  Murreyland 
called  Fores.  .  .  .  Wherevpon  learning  by  hir  confession 
in  what  house  in  the  towne  it  was  where  they  wrought  there 
mischiefous  mysterie,  he  sent  foorth  souldiers,  about  the 
middest  of  the  night,  who  breaking  into  the  house,  found 
one  of  the  witches  resting  vpon  a  wooden  broch  an  image  of 
wax  at  the  fier,  resembling  in  each  feature  the  kings  person, 
made  and  deuised  (as  is  to  be  thought)  by  craft  and  art  of 
the  diuell:  an  other  of  them  sat  reciting  certeine  words  of 
inchantment,  and  still  basted  the  image  with  a  certeine 
liquor  verie  busilie. 

The  souldiers  finding  them  occupied  in  this  wise,  tooke 
them  togither  with  the  image,  and  led  them  into  the  castell, 
where  being  streictlie  examined  for  what  purpose  they  went 
about  such  manner  of  inchantment,  they  answered,  to  the 
end  to  make  away  the  king:  for  as  the  image  did  waste 
afore  the  fire,  so  did  the  bodie  of  the  king  break  foorth  in 
sweat.  And  as  for  the  words  of  inchantment,  they  serued 
to  keepe  him  still  waking  from  slecpe,  so  that  as  the  wax 
euer  melted,  so  did  the  kings  flesh :  by  the  which  means  it 
should  haue  come  to  passe,  that  when  the  wax  was  once 


MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 


clean  consumed,  the  death  of  the  king  should  immediatlie 
follow.  So  they  were  taught  by  euill  spirits,  and  hired  to 
worke  the  feat  by  the  nobles  of  Murrey  land.  The 
standers  by,  that  heard  such  an  abominable  tale  told  by 
these  witches,  streightwaies  brake  the  image,  and  caused  the 
witches,  (according  as  they  had  well  deserued)  to  be  burned 
to  death. 

The  following  brief  table  of  related  procedures  is  col- 
lated from  Frazer's  material : 


TRIBE  OR  PLACE 
O  j  ibway 

Malay 

Eastern  Java 
Torres  Straits 


SYMBOL 
little  wooden  image 

image  of  beeswax 


likeness      drawn     on 

paper 
wax  effigy 


PROCEDURE  AND  EFFECT 

Stab  to  injure;  bury 
with  magic  words  to 
kill. 

Pierce  eye  to  blind, 
etc.,  transfix  and 
bury  to  kill. 

Kills  by  burning  or 
burying  it. 

Pierce  with  stingray; 
stingray  will  sting 
him  in  same  place 
next  time  he  fishes. 

Left  in  wood ;  as  it  de- 
cays, person  dies. 

Pierce  with  needle; 
will  be  wounded  in 
same  spot  in  next 
fight. 

Cut  with  razor  and 
pierce  with  pegs  to 
kill. 

Stick  full  of  pins  and 
glass  (in  heart  if  to 
kill  at  once,  not 
otherwise)  ;  put  in 
running  water  with 
head  up-stream. 

The  intimacy  of  the  identification  with  the  symbol  ex- 
tends even  to  anatomical  detail.  It  is  reported  that  such 
implicit  faith  is  placed  in  the  efficacy  of  the  procedures 
that  persons  have  been  seriously  affected  on  learning  that 
the  magic  had  been  directed  against  them.  Per  contra, 
images  of  children  are  specially  treated  by  women  to  make 


Lerons  of  Borneo  wooden  image 

Matabele  clay  figure 

Bam-Margi  Hindus  image  of  flour  or  earth 

Highland  Scotch  clay  image 


SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION  93 

themselves  conceive.  These  examples  give  no  complete 
idea  of  the  mental  mechanisms  in  magic  through  associ- 
ation by  similarity.  The  criteria  of  similarity  often  show 
a  good  deal  of  associative  finesse.  A  pregnant  woman  of 
the  Haida  Indians  lets  eels  and  round  stones  slide  over 
her  abdomen  to  bring  an  easy  delivery.  To  secure  male 
offspring,  a  Saibai  woman  of  Torres  Straits  will  press  to 
her  abdomen  a  fruit  resembling  the  male  organ,  giving  it 
then  to  another  woman  who  has  had  only  boys.  Eskimo 
children  may  not  play  cat's  cradle,  because  later  their 
fingers  might  become  tangled  in  the  harpoon  line.  There 
are  many  analogous  tabus  against  the  use  of  the  spindle. 
Other  interesting  procedures  deal  with  the  food-supply. 
In  one  tribe,  the  men  masturbate  upon  the  clove-trees  to 
secure  the  fertility  of  the  soil.  Malay  camphor-hunters 
must  not  eat  their  salt  fine,  or  they  will  find  only  small 
grains  of  camphor.  A  Brazilian  tribe  must  always  ham- 
string a  deer  before  bringing  it  home,  or  they  and  their 
children  will  always  be  eluded  by  their  enemies.  When 
the  men  of  one  of  the  Dyak  tribes  are  away  fighting,  the 
women  must  wake  early  or  the  men  will  oversleep;  they 
must  not  oil  their  hair  or  the  men  will  slip.  They  must 
prepare  pop  corn  and  scatter  it  on  the  porch  every  morn- 
ing; thus  agility  will  be  imparted  to  the  men,  etc.,  etc. 
(Frazer).  Josiah  Moses  directs  attention  to  a  similar 
element  of  sympathetic  magic  in  the  doctrine  of  signa- 
tures. "  Bloodroot,  on  account  of  its  red  juice,  is  good 
for  the  blood ;  liverwort,  having  a  leaf  like  the  liver,  cures 
diseases  of  the  liver;  .  .  .  celandine,  having  a  yellow 
juice,  cures  jaundice;  .  .  .  bear's  grease,  being  taken 
from  an  animal  thickly  covered  with  hair,  is  recommended 
t  >  persons  fearing  baldness."  8 
»Path.  A.  Rel,  181. 


94  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

A  few  symbols  show  combination  of  association  by 
similarity  with  association  by  contiguity.  An  image  of 
the  person  to  be  affected  may  be  made  with  pieces  of  his 
clothes,  or  some  of  his  hair  or  finger  nails.  In  many 
cases,  however,  there  is  no  attempt  at  constructing  a  phys- 
ical likeness,  but  the  charm  is  worked  merely  upon  some- 
thing with  which  the  person  has  been  associated  by  contig- 
uity. This  is  the  second  main  division  of  sympathetic 
magic,  being  called  contagious  magic.  If  any  harm  comes 
Mto  an  extracted  tooth  it  may  affect  the  previous  owner. 
/  A  tree  to  which  Maoris  used  to  attach  the  navel-cords  of 
their  children  was  embraced  by  barren  women  to  obtain 
offspring.  There  are  many  procedures  with  the  placenta 
for  safeguarding  the  well-being  of  the  child.  Among  the 
Melanesians,  if  a  man's  friends  find  an  arrow  which  has 
wounded  him,  they  keep  it  in  a  damp  place,  and  with  cool 
leaves,  to  make  the  inflammation  subside.  If  his  enemies 
find  it,  they  put  it  in  the  fire  to  further  inflame  the  wound. 
They  "  keep  the  bowstring  taut,  and  twang  it  occasion- 
ally, for  this  will  cause  the  wounded  man  to  suffer  from 
tension  of  the  nerves  and  spasms  of  tetanus."  This  prin- 
ciple of  a  "  hair  of  the  dog  that  bit  you  "  is  reflected  in 
the  idea  that  injuries  may  be  treated  by  treating  the  nail 
or  knife  by  which  they  were  caused.  Frazer  gives  it  as 
an  especially  pervasive  superstition  that  by  injuring  foot- 
prints the  feet  that  made  them  are  injured.  Thus,  if  a 
nail  is  driven  into  a  man's  footprints,  he  will  fall  lame. 

Those  things  which  have  likeness  to,  or  things  which 
have  been  in  contact  with,  the  object  to  be  affected,  be- 
come symbolic  representatives  of  that  object,  and  acts  per- 
formed upon  them  will  be  effective  upon  it.  It  is  identi- 
fied with  them  for  good  or  ill,  and  they  are  symbols  of  it. 
These  are  the  sole  conditions  that  need  be  satisfied  for  a 


SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION  95 

symbolism  of  the  most  complete  degree  of  identification 
to  be  established.  In  this  way  practically  any  symbolism 
is  possible  under  the  laws  of  association.  Wherever  ideas 
are  associated,  mechanisms  of  symbolism  exist.  Wher- 
ever ideas  are  pleasant  or  unpleasant,  motives  of  sym- 
bolism exist. 

Though  the  symbolism  may  be  clear  enough,  we  cannot 
always  trace  the  process  of  association.     What,  for  exam- 
ple, is  the  association  between  such  terms  as  cut,  foxed, 
out  of  funds,  hard  up,  whipped,  whittled,  and  the  drunk- 
enness they  are  used  to  denote?     Or  between  this  state 
and  the  neologisms  like  cronk,  spiffed,  stropolusf    No 
doubt  it  would  be  possible  to  construct  some  kinds  of  asso- 
ciation between  them  and  drunkenness,  but  this  would 
give  no  assurance  that  they  had  actually  led  to  the  sym- 
bolism.    The  idea  must  be  associated  with  its  symbol  v 
in  some  way,  an^  apparently  may  he  as-^iated  with  it  in  I 
any  wayj  bu^  we  must  not  expect  to  be  ably  ^wavs  to  \ 
trace  the  association.     On  the  other  hand,  it  is  obvious 
that  the  possibility  of  symbolism  cannot  be  excluded  on 
the  mere  ground  that  none  of  the  more  obvious  kinds  of 
association  can  subsequently  be  traced.     Who  can  be  sure 
of  what  association  led  originally  to  the  recently  popular 
symbolism   of   twenty-three?     Many  explanations  were 
offered.     There  was  no  doubt  as  to  what  the  fateful 
number  symbolized.     To  consider  only  symbols  in  which 
associative  contact  was  clear  for  him  who  runs  to  read 
would  inevitably  result  in  a  loss  of  a  large  portion  of  the 
facts.     The  criterion  of  symbolism  is  strictly  this :  how  | 
clearly  and  how  far  does  the  supposed  symbol  function1* 
as  a  representative  of  what  it  is  supposed  to  symbolize?  ' 

Our  first  serious  contact  with  this  question  comes  in  s 
the  problem  of  symbolism  in  dreams.     The  initial  fact  of 


96  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

dream-symbolism  does  not  seem  open  to  doubt.  Per- 
haps the  simplest  sort  is  the  symbolic  re-interpretation  of 
sense-perceptions  in  the  dream.  This  is  a  common  oc- 
currence, which  Kipling's  account  of  slumbers  in  a  tor- 
pedo boat  serves  to  illustrate. 

Anon,  I  caught  the  tramp  of  armies  afoot,  the  hum  of 
crowded  cities  awaiting  the  event,  the  single  sob  of  a  woman, 
and  dry  roaring  of  wild  beasts.  A  dropped  shovel  clanging 
on  the  stokehold  floor,  was,  naturally  enough,  the  unbarring 
of  arena  gates;  our  sucking  uplift  across  the  crest  of  some 
little  swell,  nothing  less  than  the  haling  forth  of  new  worlds ; 
our  half-turning  descent  into  the  hollow  of  its  mate,  the 
abysmal  plunge  of  God-forgotten  planets.  Through  all 
these  phenomena  and  more  —  though  I  ran  with  wild 
horses  over  illimitable  plains  of  rustling  grass;  though  I 
crouched  belly-flat  under  appalling  fires  of  musketry ;  though 
I  was  Livingstone,  painless  and  incurious  in  the  grip  of  his 
lion  —  my  eyes  saw  the  lamp  swinging  in  its  gimbals,  the 
irregularly  gliding  patch  of  light  on  the  steel  ladder,  and 
every  elastic  shadow  on  the  corners  of  the  frail  angle  irons ; 
while  my  body  strove  to  accommodate  itself  to  the  infernal 
vibration  of  the  machine. 

The  writer  has  observed  instances  in  which  the  eyes 
open  in  a  struggle  to  awake  from  a  nightmare-like  state, 
and  objects  seen  are  accordingly  misinterpreted.  Thus, 
on  one  occasion,  some  irregular  patches  of  light  on  the 
wall  were  thought  to  be  the  figure  of  a  colleague  watch- 
ing for  the  dreamer  to  wake,  and  the  idea  was  present: 
"  It  is  fortunate  that  it  is  he,  and  not  some  one  who 
might  do  me  an  injury  while  in  this  powerless  condition." 
That  is,  a  certain  idea  associated  with  the  perception 
conies  to  awareness  instead  of  the  perception  itself,  and 
assumes  "  reality  "  in  place  of  it.  Now  —  and  this  next 
step  is  most  important  —  just  as  perceptions  may  be  rep- 
resented in  the  dream  under  strange,  though  associated, 


SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION  97 

guises,  so  may  ideas  be  represented  in  the  dream  in  < 
strange  guises. 

To  learn  this  has  not  been  so  easy  as  in  the  case  of 
perceptions.  Where  the  idea  has  come  as  a  perception 
through  the  eye,  ear,  skin,  or  perhaps,  the  digestive  or- 
gans, we  are  much  more  likely  to  know  what  has  hap- 
pened and  to  be  able  to  catch  its  distorted  reflection  in  the 
current  of  the  dream.  However,  these  are  the  most  cer- 
tain demonstrations  of  symbolism  that  can  be  supplied 
for  dream  ideas.  The  best  are  those  cited  by  Kraepelin. 
Here,  as  in  the  instances  quoted  in  the  last  chapter,  the 
dreamer  is  aware  of  intending  to  have  one  thing  said,  but 
actually  something  else  is  said.  So  far  as  the  dream  is 
concerned,  what  was  actually  said  seems  to  mean  just 
what  was  intended  to  be  said. 

In  a  considerable  number  of  cases,  in  which  it  was  clear 
to  me  that  I  had  dreamed  and  experienced  an  example  of 
speech  that  I  must  attempt  to  retain,  this  example  would  at 
first,  to  my  disillusionment,  seem  to  present  no  deviation 
from  the  waking  expression ;  so  that  there  seemed  to  be  no 
object  in  noting  it.  Only  after  continued  and  deeper  reflec- 
tion would  the  nonsense  character  of  what  had  been  said 
gradually  become  clear  to  me.9 

What  is  said,  therefore,  is  unquestionably  symbolic  of 
what  was  intended  to  be  said.  The  dreamer  means  to 
say,  "  the  voluntary  furnishing  of  coal,"  and  says,  "  the 
handling  of  voluntary  coal,"  thus  personifying  the  coal, 
as  it  were.  As  a  rule,  the  expressions  are  in  obvious  and 
near  association  to  one  another.  Illustrations  are  as  fol- 

•  This  is  true  of  revelations  under  ether.  The  profound  convic- 
tion of  momentous  truth  is  present,  which,  so  far  as  it  finds  expres- 
sion, is  based  upon  slight  support.  Dr.  Holmes  kept  on  writing  so 
long  as  he  could  control  the  pen.  The  sense  of  mystery  solved  was 
supreme ;  the  written  words  recorded  only  that  a  smell  of  turpentine 
pervaded  the  atmosphere. 
8 


98 


MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 


lows ;  they  seem  to  lose  nothing  by  translation.     The  first 
two  fall  in  with  the  cases  of  re-interpreted  perceptions : 


DREAM-FORM 
awakened  from  the  cow-barn 

a  monarchical  coup  de  grace 

but  at  that  she  placed  her  feet  to 

the  left 
if  one  does  not  possess  a  proper 

intellectual  trouser-seat 
put  off  the  intellectual  shirt-col- 
lar 
he  announces,  that  he  has  left  the 

louse-cask  of  life 
veteran  clock   (Invalidenuhr} 
the  handling  of  voluntary  coals 
sense  of  the  variegated  sixth 
the  eye-sensations  must  also  get 
up 

Pischdorf  and  Heinrichau  have 
long  been  known  to  me  as  ir- 
responsible 

in  Freiburg  the  inside  of  the 
plate  serves  not  for  eating,  but 
for  the  place 

can  you  do  that  with  sympathetic 
construction-of-the-distance 
(Fernbildung) 

thus  it  was  possible  for  the  old 
fisherman  to  keep  himself  sand- 
bank-tired 


MEANING 
(Dreamer  heard  knocking  at  a 

distant  door) 
(Dreamer     heard     coals     being 

poured) 
She  did  it  unwillingly 

.  .  .  possess  thorough  knowledge, 

industry 
let  one's  self  go,  rest,  live  on  a 

pension 
(Jesting  obituary) 

old  clock 

voluntary  furnishing  of  coal 

sixth  sense  of  plants 

in  awakening,  it  is  not  sufficient 

that  one  wakes ;  one  must  also 

open  the  eyes 
one  can  easily  get  confused  there 


on  the  plate  is  a  picture  of  Frei- 
burg 

can  you  see  stereoscopically 


in  the  day's  journey  he  had  so 
spared  his  strength  that  he 
could  still  save  himself  by 
means  of  the  sandbank 


Kraepelin's  additional  notes  illuminate  the  following: 

when  one  thinks  of  it,  all  the  wild      the  small,  unimportant  collections 
apple-galleries  in  N. 

In  the  wild  apple-galleries  the  general  idea  of  the  uncul- 
tivated, not  to  be  refined  through  art  or  care,  is  replaced  by 
the  particular  idea  of  the  "  wild  apples." 


it  is  really  a  punch-holding  indi- 
vidual 


(admiring    exclamation    at    the 
sight  of  a  beautiful  landscape) 


We  meet  the  same  turning  of  thought  from  the  general 
to  the  particular  ...  in  the  observation  where  the  peculiar 


99 

adjective  punschhaltig  is  apparently  meant  to  have  some 
sense  like  intoxicating  or  charming. 

The  most  remarkable  of  all  is  as  follows,  not  reproducible 
in  English: 

Ich  lache  mich  zu  Blei  Ich  lache  Tranen  (I  laugh  till  I 

(I  laugh  myself  to  lead)  cry) 

Here  two  allied  expressions,  Ich  lache  mich  zu  Tode  and 
Ich  lache  Tranen  appear  to  have  arisen  simultaneously.  To 
the  latter  there  associated  itself  the  English  equivalent  to 
cry  falsely  changed  over  into  the  similar-sounding  to  ply, 
which  in  turn  aroused  the  sound  association  to  Blei.  It 
would  have  been  impossible  to  unravel  these  obscure  connec- 
tions, if  the  dreamer  had  not  himself  still  been  in  a  position 
to  describe  them. 

Hollingworth  reports  some  parallel  observations,  from 
the  state  of  drowsiness: 

Q.  Let's  hurry  and  get  there  by  10  o'clock. 

A.  That's  easy.  I  could  get  there  by  a  nickel  to  ten. 
(Spoken  at  9.55.) 

The  (actual)  rush  of  water  heard  through  a  porthole 
becomes  transformed  into  the  (dreamy)  husky  voice  of 
a  salesman  trying  to  sell  the  drowsy  one  a  suit.  Subject 
wonders  at  the  husky  voice,  and  why  the  salesman  has  no 
more  inflection. 

Three  (actual)  blasts  of  an  orchestra  became  (dreamy) 
movements  of  some  huge  bug  which  came  sailing  from 
behind  the  wings,  suddenly  alighting  on  the  stage,  first  on 
the  two  hind  feet,  then  bringing  down  the  middle  pair,  and 
finally  the  two  front  feet  with  the  final  blast. 

While  trying  to  get  to  sleep  the  numbers  of  the  subject's 
gymnasium  locker  kept  ringing  in  his  head,  the  left  side 
seeming  52,  the  right  side  36,  and  the  back  5236.  It  seemed 
(dreaming)  that  if  he  could  juggle  these  numbers  into  the 
right  combination  he  could  find  a  more  comfortable  posi- 
tion. 

The  above  contain  two  transformations  of  sensory  expe- 
rience and  two  transformations  of  ideas.  Thus  "  a  nickel 
to  ten  "  symbolizes  five  minutes  to  ten,  and  the  locker  num- 
bers symbolize  the  position  of  the  would-be  sleeper. 


100  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

The  following  more  elaborate  illustrations  are  quoted 
from  Silberer : 10 

Conditions:  In  the  evening  before  going  to  sleep.  I 
endeavor  in  spite  of  my  drowsiness  to  develop  a  train  of 
thought ;  instead  of  getting  further  with  it,  I  keep  losing  it. 
Drowsiness  idea:  I  am  climbing  a  precipice  but  slide 
back  considerably  at  every  step  at  which  loose  stones  roll  off. 
Interpretation:  Without  going  into  the  content  of  the 
thoughts  which  I  had,  the  hypnagogic  scene  represents  in 
many  ways  the  psychic  process.  It  represents  my  mental 
endeavor  in  that  it  makes  me  mount  a  difficult  precipice.  It 
represents  the  uselessness  of  the  exertion  in  that  it  makes  me 
continually  slide  back  and  not  reach  the  end  for  which  I  am 
striving  (mountain  top,  i.e.,  clear  comprehension  of  the  idea 
I  am  pursuing).  It  illustrates  the  decrease  in  the  ap- 
perception of  my  idea  through  the  "  fragmentation " 
(Abbrockeln)  of  the  rolling  stone.  The  connected  train  of 
thought  "  fragments  "  under  my  laborious  steps. 

Conditions:  In  the  evening  before  going  to  sleep.  Eing- 
enommener  Kopf.  Dull  headache.  Drowsiness  idea:  I 
see  a  matchbox  before  me  which  is  placed  upside  down  (i.e., 
so  that  the  heads  of  the  matches  are  downward).  Inter- 
pretation: the  heads  of  the  matches  refer  to  my  head.  I  feel 
myself  inflamed,  hence  the  matches,  in  whose  heads  there  is 
also  a  latent  fire  which  may  burst  out  just  as  with  me  the 
expected  inflammatory  illness  (influenza).  The  matches 
are  in  a  wooden  box,  my  head  also  is  as  though  nailed  up 
with  boards.  The  matches  have  their  heads  downward ;  I 
feel  also  as  though  I  stood  on  my  head  (blood-pressure). 

The  present  writer  can  contribute  dreams  of  his  own, 
in  each  of  which  a  definite  symbolism  was  subjectively 
evident  at  the  time  of  the  dream: 

The  dreamer  is  examining  some  psychological  apparatus, 
in  consultation  with  the  builder  of  it.  The  apparatus  is 
inclosed  in  a  case  much  larger  than  necessary,  and  the  two 
consider  the  advisability  of  mounting  some  other  instru- 

10"Ueber  die  Symbolbildung,"  Jahrb.  f.  psa.  u.  Psp.  Forsch,  III 
(1912),  687.  Cf.  also,  "  Symbol ik  des  Erwachens  u.  Schwellen- 
symbolik  iiberhaupt,"  Ibid.  621-660. 


SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION  101 

merits  in  the  same  case.  The  builder  points  to  an  unoccu- 
pied portion  of  the  case,  "  And  then  there's  all  this  space  to 
let." 

This  symbolism,  i.e.,  "  to  let "  instead  of  "  available 
for  another  purpose,"  would  serve  as  a  perfectly  ordinary 
figure  of  speech.  The  case  is  hardly  so  with  the  follow- 
ing, which  is  given  with  some  details  not  relevant  to  the 
present  point,  but  for  later  reference  (p.  120) : 

Dreamer  has  just  bought  some  supplies  at  the  market,  and 
walks  down  the  station  platform.  The  weather  threatens 
a  breaking  storm.  On  the  platform  are  two  acquaintances, 
X  and  Y,  who  in  the  dream  are  bitter  enemies,  though 
actually  not  so.  In  this  character  they  stand  some  distance 
apart  on  the  platform,  and  do  not  notice  each  other. 
Dreamer  first  passes  X  (toward  whom  he  feels  actually  a 
little  antagonism),  and  makes  a  commonplace  remark  to  him 
about  the  weather.  Then  passing  Y  (with  whom  he  is  on 
much  closer  terms),  he  looks  again  at  the  sky,  sees  it  excep- 
tionally black,  and  says,  referring  to  the  weather,  "  It  looks 
like  another  scrap  between  you  and  X."  Y  smiles  and 
agrees.  Dreamer  passes  on,  walking  toward  the  hospital, 
and  the  rain  begins,  at  once  becoming  a  violent  driving 
storm.  Just  as  he  passes  Dr.  R.'s  house,  he  finds  he  has  not 
brought  the  purchased  supplies,  and  is  greatly  annoyed  at 
not  having  done  so.  Then  he  remembers  that  he  should  not 
have  brought  them,  since  they  are  to  be  delivered  where  he 
lives ;  but  the  annoyance  persists  to  the  effect  of  waking  him. 

The  conflict  and  enmity  between  X  and  Y  become  rep- 
resentative of  the  conflict  of  the  elements.  Again : 

Dream :  A  copy  of  Stephen  Leacock's  "  Nonsense 
Novels  "  is  left  in  a  store  while  the  dreamer  goes  away  for 
some  purpose,  now  not  clear.  (The  book  is  green;  the 
actual  copy  in  the  dreamer's  possession  is  brownish  red.) 
On  returning,  and  asking  the  shopkeeper  for  the  book,  the 
name  of  author  can  no  longer  be  recalled ;  there  is  an  em- 
barrassed hesitation,  which  terminates  in  asking  for  the 
"  book  by  Edgar  Lavalle,"  with  a  pronounced  feeling  of 
"  that  isn't  right,  but  it  will  have  to  do." 


10S  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

Obviously  Edgar  Lavallc  functions  as  a  symbol  of 
Stephen  Lcacock.  It  happens  that  one  fairly  close  asso- 
ciative connection  can  be  reconstructed  between  the  two, 
for  Lavalle  is  one  of  the  large  universities  in  Montreal, 
and  Leacock  is  at  McGill,  the  other  university.  No  such 
hypothesis  can  be  offered  for  Edgar.  Nor  can  anything 
probable  be  offered  as  to  how  Stephen  Leacock  came  to 
be  temporarily  lost,  though  various  possibilities  are  pres- 
ent to  the  writer's  mind. 

A  wholly  nonlinguistic  symbolism  is  the  follow- 
ing: 

Dream :  A  game  of  tennis  (played  tennis  the  day  before) 
suggests  particularly  a  game  played  with  Dr.  X  six  or  seven 
years  previously.  The  tennis  ball  is  of  unusual  form,  sug- 
gests a  human  embryo.  The  idea  comes,  "  Is  the  child 
worth  saving  ?  "  with  the  answer,  "  No,  it  is  not,"  and  the 
ball  is  returned  over  the  net  with  a  peculiar  stroke,  to  have 
the  effect  of  killing  it.  (Not  the  "  killing  "  stroke  of  tennis, 
but  a  twisted  one.)  There  is  plain  awareness  in  the  dream 
of  the  child-ball  symbolism. 

In  the  following,  dream-symbols  are  explained  by  an- 
other character  in  the  dream: 

Dream:  Te.  is  discussing  with  the  dreamer  the  conduct 
of  Mu.,  who  has  behaved  dishonorably.  In  the  course  of 
the  discussion,  Te.  asks  the  question,  "  Could  you  wear 
that  ?  "  Dreamer  indicating  that  he  does  not  understand, 
Te.  explains  that  it  means,  would  the  dreamer  consider  it 
proper  to  act  in  such  a  way  as  Mu.  has  done.  Later,  of 
another  aspect  of  Mu.'s  conduct,  Te.  asks,  "  What  kind  of 
a  curtain  is  that  ?  "  and  to  dreamer's  query  explains  that  this 
means  what  kind  of  a  justification  is  that  for  Mu.'s  conduct.11 
Dreamer  laughingly  remarks  that  he  "  Cannot  keep  up  with 
all  these  new  slang  expressions ;  you  will  have  to  use  six 
months'  old  ones  on  me." 

This  is  a  good  example  of  the  "dissociative"  symbol- 
11  Cf.  the  expression,  "  cloak  "  for  one's  actions. 


SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION  105 

ism  of  Chapter  VI  (p.  218),  it  being  patent  that  the 
dreamer's  main  personality  does  not  understand  the  sym- 
bolic expressions  until  they  are  explained  by  the  split-off 
trends  of  the  dreamer's  mind  which  compose  the  person- 
ality of  Te.  (Cf.  footnote  to  p.  189.) 

We  have  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  kinds  of  asso- 
ciation that  give  rise  to  symbolisms  in  dreams  differ  par- 
ticularly from  the  kinds  of  association  by  which  symbols 
are  established  in  waking  life.  Waking,  we  call  the  dol- 
lar a  piece  of  lettuce;  in  the  dream,  accordingly,  a  capi- 
talist might  well  be  represented  by  a  market  gardener 
tending  greenhouses  full  of  the  product.  We  say  that  a 
drunken  person  is  sewed  up,  has  a  turkey  on  his  back,  is 
gilded.  In  the  dream  we  could  expect  to  see  him  actu- 
ally sewn  in  a  sack,  as  a  fugitive  poultry  thief,  or  person- 
ating the  ill-fated  little  boy  at  the  coronation  of  the 
mediaeval  Pope.  It  might  seem  far-fetched,  but  it  would 
be  only  using  a  symbol  perfectly  current  in  normal  speech, 
to  dream  of  a  person  eating  bits  of  cloth,  who  in  waking 
life  shows  great  talkativeness.  In  dream  symbolisms,  as 
in  others,  "  reasonableness  "  of  the  associative  connection 
is  quite  superfluous. 

Such  is  the  evidence  that  the  dream  and  allied  stated 
are  at  least  capable  of  presenting  in  symbolic  form  ideas 
and  experiences  which  are  recognized.  The  most  satis- 
factory evidence  of  the  symbolism  involved  is  that  of 
direct  subjective  awareness  of  the  symbolism ;  this  ap- 
pears in  nearly  all  the  above  instances.  These  cases  of 
subjective  awareness  seem  most  frequent  in  drowsiness 
or  in  very  light  sleeping  states,  and  are  rare  in  ordinary 
sleep.  Let  it  be  clear  in  what  terms  dream  symbolism  is 
being  defined:  Dream-ideas  have  hallucinatory  vivid- 
ness, that  is,  they  are  identified  with  reality.  Dream- 


104  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

ideas  appear  as  the  equivalents  of  certain  other  ideas  with 
which  they  are  associatively  connected.  Edgar  Lavalle 
symbolizes  Stephen  Leacock;  a  nickel  to  ten  symbolizes 
five  minutes  to  ten;  Psypen  symbolizes  psychische  Typen. 
One  of  Prince's  cases  desired  to  record  the  details  of  a 
vision  as  soon  as  it  appeared.12  In  the  process  she  pro- 
duced an  elaborate  poem.  It  gave  to  the  vision  a  very 
personal  and  sentimental  interpretation.  But  this  inter- 
pretation was  not  consciously  in  the  mind  at  the  time  of 
writing.  The  writing  described  a  symbolism  that  was  in 
the  mind,  but  outside  of  consciousness.  It  is  suggested 
by  such  observations  that  dream-ideas  in  general,  perhaps 
all  the  remainder  of  them,  are  also  symbols  of  associated 
ideas,  in  which  the  connection  is  obscured. 

Since  the  dream-symbol  is  presumed  to  be  associated 
with  the  thing  symbolized,  a  preliminary  mode  of  ap- 
proach is  to  note  the  dream-content  as  remembered,  and 
then  observe  the  ideas  which,  in  the  waking  state,  come 
up  in  association  with  this  content.  It  is  supposed  that 
somewhere  among  these  will  be  found  ideas  of  which 
the  dream-ideas  were  representative.  This  is  a  branch 
of  the  psychoanalytic  procedure,  which  consists  in  thor- 
oughly examining  mental  contents  of  all  sorts,  so  far  as 
they  can  be  conveyed  in  terms  of  language.13  For  a 
given  dream-iidea,  a  number  of  associated  ideas  may  thus 
be  recorded.  There  is  no  immediate  means  of  know- 
ing which  of  these  ideas  underlay  the  dream  idea.  The 
check  upon  the  correctness  of  interpretation  so  arrived 

12  Unc.,  204ff. 

13  Pfister  defines  as  follows :    "  Psychoanalysis  is  a  scientific  method 
adapted  to  neurotic  and  mentally  diseased,  as  well  as  normal  individ- 
uals, which,  through  the  collection  and  interpretation  of  associated 
ideas   (but  avoiding  hypnotism  and  enforced  suggestion),  seeks  to 
determine  and  to  influence  the  mental  trends  and  mental  contents 
lying  below  the  threshold  of  consciousness,"  D.  psa.  Met.,  16. 


SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION  105 

at,  is  that  the  interpretation  be  put  to  some  further  test 
of  symbolism  than  the  simple  fact  of  association.14 

Freud's  hypothesis  is  that  there  exist  in  the  mind  large 
groups  of  ideas  of  which  the  waking  personality  does 
not  have  awareness.  They  are  not  like  reflex  or  auto- 
matic mental  processes,  such  as  walking,  of  which  we  are 
unaware  because  they  are  instinctive  or  habitual.  These 
ideas  are  too  painful  for  the  personality  to  contemplate, 
and  they  do  not  come  to  awareness  because  the  mind  is 
able  (as  is  presumed),  to  oppose  resistances  to  them 
which  prevent  their  reaching  awareness.  Thoughts  of 
certain  kinds  do  not  overcome  this  intrapsychic  resist- 
ance, and  the  personality  does  not  become  aware  of  them. 
They  are  tabu.  We  shall  speak  of  them  here  as  sub- 
merged ideas;  they  are  parts  of  the  unconscious.  (Chap- 
ter V.)  One  of  the  properties  of  sleep  is  that  during  it 
this  intrapsychic  resistance  is  somewhat  diminished,  and 
the  submerged  ideas  come  nearer  awareness.  But,  if 
they  came  to  awareness  in  too  near  their  true  form,  the 
sleeper  would  wake  in  horror  (nightmare).  Therefore, 
they  reach  awareness  only  as  symbols,  which  may  in 
themselves  be  pleasant,  or  at  least  not  so  unpleasant  as 
to  interrupt  the  process  of  sleep.  Thus  a  girl  with  sub- 
merged erotic  feelings  does  not  dream  herself  ravished, 
but  as  running  along  a  street  in  the  red-light  district. 
(Pfister.)  The  mind  is  like  a  city  whose  inhabitants  are 
by  day  engaged  in  the  peaceful  pursuits  of  legitimate 
commerce;  but  at  night,  when  all  the  good  burghers  are 
sound  asleep  in  their  beds,  out  come  these  disreputable 

14  The  boldest  applications  of  the  method  have  been  made  by  its 
originators.  Critics  of  the  method  object  that  any  test  of  symbolism 
is  not,  or  cannot  consistently  be  applied.  Freud  and  his  followers 
are  led  to  a  general  conclusion  which  covers  at  once  the  character 
of  all  dream-symbolism,  and  the  motive  for  it. 


106  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

members  of  the  psychic  underworld  to  disport  themselves 
in  their  own  peculiar  and  unseemly  fashion,  decking 
themselves  out  in  fantastic  costumes,  in  order  that  they 
may  not  be  recognized  and  apprehended.  (Campbell.) 

A  physical  model  to  illustrate  the  process  could  be 
constructed  of  the  following  elements,  the  whole  con- 
stituting a  thermostat  with  automatic  cut-off  for  the 
source  of  heat  when  it  accidentally  becomes  too  great. 

In  the  model  as  outlined  (p.  107),  the  analogies  are, 

Electric  action  Dream-ideas 

Resistance  of   electrolyte          Intrapsychic  resistance 
Sleep  Gas-flame 

The  operation  of  the  analogy  would  be  as  follows: 

1.  Electrolyte        cold.  Waking      state.     Intrapsychic 
Its    resistance   too   high  resistance    too    high    for    sub- 
for      any     current     to  merged  ideas  to  come  to  aware- 
pass,  ness  in  any  form. 

2.  Gas-flame    lit    and  Sleep     established.     Intrapsy- 
electrolyte  heated ;  its  re-  chic   resistance    thereby    dimin- 
sistance   thereby    dimin-  ished   so   that   submerged   ideas 
ished  so  that  some  cur-  can  come  up  to  awareness  in  the 
rent  can  flow  through.  form  of  symbols. 

3.  The  more  the  elec-  The  greater  the  diminution  of 
trolyte    is    heated,    the  intrapsychic  resistance  in  sleep,15 
lower  its  resistance  and  the  nearer  to  their  true  form  the 
the    more    current    can  submerged  ideas  can  come  to  the 
pass  through.  surface  of  awareness. 

4.  When   the   electro-  In  order  that  the  dream  may 
lyte  is  heated  to  a  certain  act  as  the  "guardian  of  sleep," 
degree,     it    operates     a  the  intrapsychic  resistance  must 
thermo-regulator    which  not  become  too  low,  as  this  would 
checks     the     gas-flame,  allow    the    submerged    ideas    to 
keeping    the    electrolyte  come  to  awareness  in  too  near 

13  It  should  perhaps  be  said  here  that  intrapsycliic  resistance  is 
not  supposed  to  be  proportional  to  the  depth  of  sleep.  The  factors 
on  which  it  depends  are  not  known. 


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107 


108  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

from  getting  too  warm     their   true    form,   which   would 
and    letting    too    much     awaken  the  sleeper, 
current  through. 

5.  The  thermo-regula-        If  the  intrapsychic  resistance 
tor  for  checking  the  gas-     is  so  diminished  that  the  sub- 
flame    sometimes    fails,     merged  ideas  come  to  the  surface 
In  this  case,  the  electro-     in  too  near  their  true  form,  i.e., 
lyte  becomes  over-heated     insufficiently  disguised  by  sym- 
and    lets    more    current     bols,  the  affective  reaction  is  so 
through  than  the  appara-     great    that    the    sleeper    wakes, 
tus    is    made    to    stand,     usually  in  a  terror. 
Then  the  combined  cir- 
cuit-breaker   and    auto- 
matic gas  cut-off  operate, 
interrupt     the     current, 
and  extinguish  the  gas- 
flame. 

What,  then,  are  these  terrible  creatures  of  the  mind, 
which,  "  like  the  Demons  in  whose  company  Afrasiab 
made  his  voyage  down  the  Oxus,  must  be  suffered  to 
slumber,  or  we  perish  "  ?  The  human  organism  is  not 
in  the  habit  of  going  into  terror-paralyses  in  the  presence 
of  mere  ideas.  Freud  considers  that  the  ultimate  sources 
of  the  submerged  ideas  are  in  trends  of  quite  early  life, 
many  of  which  are  most  repugnant  to  the  adult  personal- 
ity. For  example,  we  should  find  more  marked  in  child- 
hood that  "  germinal  possibility "  of  abnormal  sexual 
conduct,  which  William  James  long  since  attributed  to 
most  of  us.  If  such  ideas  come  to  us  in  waking  life,  we 
do  not  act  on  them,  and  they  do  not  trouble  us.  But  in 
dreams,  when  ideas  seem  real,  such  ideas  (or  sometimes 
their  dream-symbols)  may  arouse  in  us  all  the  affective 
reaction  that  their  actual  experience  would  arouse  in  the 
waking  state. 

As  the  dream  thus  presents  a  realization,  it  is  naturally 
a  realization  of  some  trend  in  the  mind.  Admittedly, 


SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION  109 

special  trends  are  not  often  discernible  in  dream-ideas  as 
we  see  them.  But  we  know  the  dream  transforms  by 
symbolizing,  and  the  trends  would  very  probably  be  dis- 
torted beyond  immediate  recognition.  Two  cases  in 
which  it  was  not  beyond  recognition  may  be  given. 
Since  they  contain  identifying  data,  it  is  necessary  to 
disguise  them  somewhat.16 

(General  waking  situation:  Dreamer  has  thought  of 
going  to  New  York  by  a  train  called  "  The  Owl,"  but 
finally  buys  a  ticket  for  the  "  Paul  Revere  Express.") 
Dream :  Passing  along  the  station  platform  he  sees  a  train 
in  all  respects  identified  with  the  "  Owl,"  having  the  cars 
and  engine  which  distinguish  it,  but  designated  by  no  name, 
and  not  on  the  track  from  which  the  "  Owl "  regularly 
leaves.  This  train  is  now  felt  to  compare  very  favorably 
with  the  "  Paul  Revere  Express,"  and  regret  is  felt  that  the 
dreamer  is  not  going  on  it.  Later,  and  apparently  nearer 
the  waking  state,  the  actual  situation  is  felt  to  be  far  prefer- 
able. Later  still,  when  nearly  awake,  the  train  is  identified 
to  awareness  with  the  name  of  "  The  Owl."  The  "  Paul 
Revere  Express  "  was  continually  present  as  such  during 
the  dream,  with  no  symbolic  distortion. 

This  dream  is  interesting  as  showing,  in  regard  to  the 
"  Owl,"  the  beginning  of  a  symbolic  distortion  not  yet 
developed  far  enough  to  make  the  symbol  unrecognizable. 
The  train  seen  on  the  platform  is  the  "  Owl "  in  all  of 
many  distinguishing  particulars,  except  name  and  track. 
It  is  hardly  a  symbolism,  but  it  shows  an  early  stage  of 
the  process  by  which  symbolism  may  take  place. 

August  Hoch  has  modified  Freud's  statement  to  say 
that  the  dream  represents  "  a  difficult  situation  with  an 

16  A  hint  of  this  disguise  is  derivable  from  the  following  ban  mot 
of  the  LustiRe  Blacttcr:  "  Sehen  sic,  Hebe  Freundin,  das  ganze 
Leben  gleiclit  cinem  Bahnhof.  Alles  hastet  an  einander  vorbci. 
Jedem  ist's  Wurscht  \vo  die  anderen  hingehen.  Und  wenn  man 
endlich  einmal  gliicklich  eingestiegcn  ist.  sitzt  man  —  im  falschen 
Zug!" 


110  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

attempt  at  adjustment."  This  is  certainly  true  of  many 
dreams;  it  is  not  impossibly  true  of  dreams  in  general. 
But  the  dream  is  content  to  offer  very  childish  adjust- 
ments, of  which  the  following  is  an  example : 

Dreamer  hurries  to  catch  the  train  to  Fitchburg,  but  on 
arriving  at  the  station  finds  that  a  friend  who  was  going  on 
that  train  is  not  on  the  platform;  the  train  has  apparently 
gone.  The  station-agent  is  near  by,  and  the  dreamer  in- 
quires of  him,  but  that  official  refuses  to  tell  him  whether 
the  train  has  gone.  It  is  of  importance  for  the  dreamer  to 
reach  the  train,  and  this  attitude  on  the  part  of  the  station- 
agent  annoys  him  greatly,  with  the  result  that  he  begins  to 
awake.  At  this  point  there  comes  over  the  dreamer  a  dis- 
tinct feeling  of  desire  that  the  station-agent  should  refuse 
to  answer  the  question ;  for,  if  he  tells  the  dreamer  the  train 
has  gone,  there  will  no  longer  be  any  chance  of  his  reaching 
it,  but,  if  the  dreamer  can  keep  from  knowing  that  it  has 
gone,  he  may  be  able  to  catch  it  after  all. 

This  shows  in  elementary  form  the  common  human 
frailty  of  shutting  one's  eyes  to  truth  with  the  idea  of 
preventing  it  from  affecting  one.  It  is  a  side  of  autistic 
thinking  that  we  have  had  to  discard  in  living  by  experi- 
ence. The  dream  makes  continual  use  of  reasoning  like 
this. 

The  sum  of  evidence  hardly  warrants  the  supposition 
that  all  dream-symbolisms  occur  because  the  things  sym- 
bolized are  unpleasant.  It  is  much  more  likely  that  the 
dream-state  has,  as  such,  the  property  to  represent  ideas 
to  awareness  in  symbolic  form.  Silberer  supports  a  con- 
ception of  this  kind.  Of  drowsiness  symbolisms  he 
says: 

These  auto-symbolic  phenomena  appeared  as  fatigue- 
phenomena,  and  as  a  reversion  from  a  more  difficult  mode 
of  thinking  to  an  easier  and  more  primitive  one.17 

1T"Phantaste  u.  Mythos,"  Jahrb.  f.  fisa.  u.  />.$/>.  Porsch.  II  (1910), 
605.  Quoted  by  Pfister. 


SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION  111 

Elsewhere  he  says: 

If  we  examine  the  evolution  of  the  symbol,  we  see  the 
symbol  appear  when  the  mind  of  man  reaches  out  for  an 
idea  that  is  still  beyond  its  power  to  grasp.18  We  also  see 
the  symbol  appear  when  a  previously  higher  intellectual 
faculty  is  lowered  (as  in  dreams  and  mental  disease).  In 
both  cases  the  mind  loses  the  grasp  of  the  idea  in.  its  higher 
[more  abstract]  form,  and  retains  only  that  of  a  lower 
[more  "  tangible,"  symbolic]  representative.  .  .  .  The  spe- 
cial service  of  Freud,  Jung,  and  their  followers  has  lain 
partly  in  demonstrating  the  influence  of  the  affective  life  in 
bringing  about  this  " apperceptive  insufficiency"  of  the 
mind.19 

It  is  a  common  saying  that  if  one  is  hungry  one  dreams 
of  sumptuous  fare,  and,  if  thirsty,  of  a  cooling  draught 
presented  to  the  lips.  Sometimes,  on  being  about  to 
taste,  the  illusion  disappears,  and  the  sleeper  wakes. 
Sometimes  the  action  will  be  carried  out,  and  the  dreamer 
will  enjoy  the  hallucinatory  experience.  It  seems  worth 
while  to  raise  the  question  whether  it  is  not  a  general 
rule  for  the  dream  to  satisfy  any  direct  organic  needs 
that  come  thus  into  its  consciousness.  If  the  dreamer 
feels  a  physiological  thirst,  the  dream  can  always  supply 
water  to  quench  it.  But  if  such  a  desire  is  present  in 
the  dream  and  not  satisfied  by  the  dream,  this  is  perhaps 
a  proof  that  the  desire  in  question  does  not  represent  the 
sensation  of  an  organic  need,  but  is  a  symbolic  repre- 
sentation of  another  need.  The  writer  has  quoted  else- 
where a  dream  of  standing  on  a  mountain  side  down 
which  flows  a  gushing  waterfall ;  the  dreamer  is  thirsty, 
but  does  not  drink.  The  suggestion  is  made  that,  if  it 
were  a  real  organic  thirst,  he  would  drink.  The  fact 

18  The  representation  of  deity  in  the  guise  of  man,  animals,  or 
monsters,  is  presumably  an  example  of  his  contention. 

1*"Ueber  die  Symbolbildung,"  Jahrb.  f.  f>sa.  it.  f>sf>.  Forsch.  Ill 
(1912),  675,  681.  (Matter  in  brackets  inserted  by  author.) 


MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

that  he  does  not  drink  is  evidence  that  the  thirst  is  sym- 
bolic of  another  longing  that  is  not  so  simply  satisfied, 
and  against  which  other  trends  in  the  personality  are 
powerfully  opposed. 

Like  the  delusions  of  mental  disease  (p.  211),  the 
dream  persistently  goes  contrary  to  the  aims  and  wishes 
of  the  waking  or  dreaming  consciousness.  One  is  forced 
to  conclude  that  the  dream  may  be  determined  by 
trends  that  are  not  a  part  of  the  waking  or  dreaming 
consciousness.  It  is  because  of  such  trends  that  the 
dreamer  is  prevented  from  satisfying  his  symbolic  thirst. 
There  would  be  no  opposition  to  satisfying  an  actual  one; 
we  saw  in  Chapter  II  that  internal  conflict  does  not  ap- 
preciably affect  such  a  trend  as  this. 

In  summary,  the  principal  points  to  be  noted  in  regard 
to  dream-symbolism  are:  (i)  It  is  sometimes  but  not 
commonly  traceable  through  direct  awareness  of  the 
thing  symbolized.  (2)  The  symbols  may  stand  in  any 
associative  connection  with  their  originals,  and  this  con- 
nection does  not  need  to  be  reasonably  apparent.  (3) 
The  chief  reason  why  symbolism  plays  its  part  in  dreams 
is  supposed  by  some  to  be  because  the  ideas  symbolized 
would  themselves  be  incompatible  with  the  continuance 
of  sleep.  (4)  Such  ideas  concern  affectful  experiences 
and  trends  of  which  the  subject  may  be  aware,  but  is  not 
necessarily  so.  (5)  They  may  concern  trends  of  early 
life  which  are  no  longer  present  to  the  waking  conscious- 
ness. (6)  When  the  dream  deals  with  material  of  this 
sort,  it  regularly  depicts  some  kind  of  adjustment  of  the 
trend,  though  often  quite  an  absurd  one  by  waking  stand- 
ards. (7)  Most  dream-symbolism  is  preferably  regarded 
as  the  result  of  simpler  and  less  critical  modes  of  asso- 
ciation among  ideas  than  obtain  in  waking  life.  This 


SYMBOLIC  ASSOCIATION  113 

obviates  the  necessity  of  supposing  a  strong  emotion  back 
of  the  symbol.  (8)  If  a  simple  organic  need  is  repre- 
sented in  the  dream  without  being  satisfied  by  the  dream, 
this  is  prima  fade  evidence  that  the  craving  is  symbolic 
of  some  other  trend,  which  has  strong  counter-trends  op- 
posed to  it. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   CONTINUITY   OF   EMOTION 

IF  I  see  a  beautiful  painting,  my  eyes  perceive  a  com- 
plex of  colors  and  more  or  less  familiar  outlines.  At 
the  same  time  I  experience  a  feeling  of  pleasure,  which 
is  aroused  by  the  experience  of  the  painting,  just  as  my 
visual  perceptions  are  aroused.  I  may  move  nearer  the 
painting,  so  as  to  get  a  better  view  of  it ;  that  is  my  motor 
reaction  to  seeing  the  picture.  The  feeling  of  pleasure 
manifests  my  affective  reaction  to  seeing  it.  A  similar 
affective  reaction  occurs  if  I  think  of  some  beautiful  view 
or  other  pleasant  experience.  Mental  activity,  whether 
of  perception  or  imagination,  is  in  some  degree  pleasant 
and  unpleasant.  These  feelings  of  pleasantness  and  un- 
pleasantness are  called  ajffects.  I  have  a  pleasant  affect 
on  looking  at  the  beautiful  picture. 

In  other  words,  the  sight  of  the  picture  is  associated 
with  a  pleasant  affect.  This  association  of  particular  af- 
fects with  different  experiences  is  to  a  large  extent 
common  to  all  men.  The  taste  of  sugar  is  pleasant  to 
people  in  general ;  that  of  quinine  is  unpleasant.  Such 
pervasive  associations  of  certain  affects  with  certain  per- 
ceptions is  to  be  mainly  accounted  for  by  natural  selec- 
tion. The  organism  to  which  beneficial  situations  are 
also  pleasant  has  a  better  chance  of  survival.  But  among 
human  beings  there  are  also  great  differences  in  the  af- 
fects associated  with  similar  perceptions.  What  is  en- 

114 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EMOTION         115 

joyable  to  one  may  be  indifferent  or  abhorrent  to  another. 
A  person's  affective  reactions  are  not  even  constant.  To 
see  the  happiness  of  others  is  pleasant  to  us  when  we  also 
are  happy ;  too  often  unpleasant  to  us  when  we  are  not  so. 
Thus  a  perception  or  idea  is  not  always  associated  with 
the  same  affect.  A  given  perception  or  idea  may  be  very 
closely  associated  with  a  certain  affect.  But  that  affect 
is  not  an  inherent  part  of  the  perception  or  idea.  It  is 
not  inseparable  from  them. 

No  one  knows,  and  few  care,  why  Peter  likes  his  steak 
rare  and  Paul  likes  it  well  done;  why  John  buys  no  red 
neckties  and  James  buys  no  other.  None  of  these  pref- 
erences is  of  much  significance  for  life.  We  accept  them 
with  a  non  est  dispittandum.  More  significant  are  cases  If/* 
in  which  the  affects  are  out  of  proportion,  or  even  op-l 
posed  to,  the  affect  common  in  normal  persons.  A  man  ^r 
may  dislike  chicken  or  parsnips  so  strongly  that  he  does 
not  tolerate  them  as  an  article  of  food.  A  woman  may 
collapse  in  terror  at  the  sight  of  a  small  and  harmless 
domestic  animal.  We  have  here  a  disorder  of  the  af- 
fective reaction  which  interferes _mpre ,_ojr_fess  seriously 
with  meeting  the  ordinary  demands  of  existence.  The 
disharmonies  we  shall  discuss  are  principally  like  those 
quoted,  in  which  a  greater  affective  value  (pleasant  or 
unpleasant)  becomes  attached  to  a  situation  normally 
more  indifferent.  When  an  abnormal  degree  of  affect 
is  thus  associated  witrTan  expenencent  is  called  affective 
displacement. 

The  above  examples  might  be  produced  by  two  kinds 
of  affective  displacement.  The  first  type  of  affective 
displacement  occurs  when  a  general  mood  of  happiness 
gives  to  ordinary"  occtyrencfis  its  9wn  happy1  coloring. 
Any"  underlying  mood  can  thus  distort,  for  better  or 


116  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

worse,  the  affective  value  of  whatever  situations  arise 
while  it  persists.  Besides  its  frequent  manifestations  in 
normal  life,  it  is  evident  in  the  psychoses.  Mild  manic 
and  general  paralytic  cases  in  early  stages  show  under- 
lying happy  states.  By  virtue  of  such  a  condition,  a  mild 
manic  case  was  able  to  bear  up  exceptionally  well  under 
a  severe  bereavement.  Underlying  states  of  melancholy 
are  seen  in  the  depressions.  The  apathy  of  dementia 
praecox  toward  the  outside  world  makes  important  occa- 
sions indifferent.  This  is  affective  displacement  of  the 
general  type. 

Another  general  source  of  affective  displacements  must 
y)  be  briefly  considered.  If,  in  the  upper  layers  of  society, 
bitter  personal  enemies  meet  at  a  social  function,  they 
are  apt  to  comport  themselves  with  the  appearance  of  nor- 
mal friendship.  Social  etiquette  demands  that  their  an- 
tagonisms be  put  aside.  If  the  hostess  suffer  from  vio- 
lent headache,  or  have  a  special  personal  sorrow,  it  is  her 
duty  to  conceal  it,  presenting  only  her  gayest  demeanor 
to  her  guests.  In  their  beginning,  such  dissimulations 
may  be  artificial  and  voluntary;  the  person  knows  and 
wills  their  occurrence.  But  the  "  society  smile  "  is  not 
necessarily  a  voluntary  one.  A  gradual  habit  of  reacting 
in^the_prescribed  j^a^^developis^jDy  which  the  natural 
affect  is  automatically  covered  by  the  opposite  one. 
Then  we  have  what  may  be  called  affective  Compensation. 
The  social  conventions  are  like  the  sheet  of  tissue  paper, 
which,  if  placed  over  a  red  and  gray  card,  causes  the 
gray  portion  to  appear  of  the  color  opposite,  or  comple- 
mentary, to  the  red.  There  appears  on  the  surface  of 
character  the  opposite  emotion  from  that  naturally  be- 
longing to  the  personal  situation.  Human  character  is 
frequently  marked  by  affective  compensations  of  this 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EMOTION         117 

kind,  in  which  there  is  no  voluntary  or  recognized  sub- 
stitution of  the  opposite  affect.  The  hypocritical  Peck- 
sniff comes  in  time  to  believe  his  own  affectations  of  vir- 
tue, and  may  do  so  from  the  outset.  "  The  flatterer," 
writes  Pfister,  "  conceals  through  toadying  character  an 
evil  disposition."  Dickens  gives  us  another  fine 
type,  particularly  where  he  brings  to  the  surface  the 
deeper  self-love,  elsewhere  compensated  in  self-abase- 

ment. 

*.V 

"I  am  well  aware  that  I  am  the  umblest  person  going,  Jr«'< 
...  let  the  other  be  where  he  may.  My  mother  is  like- 
wise a  very  umble  person.  We  live  in  a  umble  abode, 
Master  Copperfield,  but  we  have  much  to  be  thankful  for. 
.  .  ."  [Chapter  16.]  "And  having  such  a  knowledge  of 
our  own  umbleness,  we  must  really  take  care  that  we're 
not  pushed  to  the  wall  by  them  as  isn't  umble.  .  .  .  *Be 
umble,'  says  father,  '  and  you'll  do  !'  ...  I  am  very  umble 
to  the  present  moment,  Master  Copperfield,  but  I've  got  a 
little  power!"  [Chapter  39.]  "Umble!  I've  umbled 
some  of  'em  for  a  pretty  long  time  back,  umble  as  I  was  !  " 
[Chapter  52.] 


Again,  to  shield  tender  and  fifnsit'VP 
nature  there  may  grow  up-a.  -defensive  wall  of  brusqtie- 
ness,  as  the  armor  grows  upon  a.^ruitacean  to  shield  the 
vulnerable  portions  from  injury.  Prudishness,  combined 
as  it  so  often  is  with  marked  autoerotism.  is  another  of 
these  conVpensatory  reactions.  Still  another  is  shown 
by  the  person  who  suffers  great  affliction  in  life,  yet  whose 
wit  is  the  life  and  soul  of  his  company.  This  feature 
has  been  thought,  not  without  reason,  to  have  its  patho- 
logical analogue  in  certain  manic  states.  There  a  mood 
of  extreme  joviality  may  ensue  upon  circumstances  not 
at  all  calculated  to  give  rise  to  happiness  in  normal  per- 
sons. Where,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  a  definite  dis- 


118  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

ease  process,  one  has  always  to  reckon  with  specific 
poisons  as  a  source  of  the  "  euphoria,"  or  sense  of  well- 
being.  Thus  the  exaggerated  well-being  of  general 
paralysis,  though  in  the  presence  of  serious  illness, 
should  not  be  regarded  in  the  same  light  as  these  "  af- 
fective compensations."  This  seems  also  true  of  the 
(optimism  of  the  consumptive),  though 


Hart  cites  it  as  a  probable  instance  of  affective  compensa- 
tjojj.  If  the  displaced  happiness  of  tuberculous  patients 
were  mainly  a  compensatory  reaction  to  the  gravity  of 
the  disease,  we  should  expect  chronic  diseases  in  general 
to  show  it  as  fully.  More  probably  the  tuberculous  poi- 
sons themselves  have  a  specific  role  in  this  euphoria,  like 
the  euphoria  of  alcoholic  intoxication,  only  less  pro- 
*  nounced  and  more  lasting. 

The  whole  process  is  summed  up  by  Hart  as  "  the  ex- 
aggerated appearance  in  the  superficial  layers  of  the  mind 
of  the  opposite  quality  "  to  that  properly  belonging  to 
the  "  complex."  The  pertinent  point  is  that  this  exag- 
geration of  the  opposite  need  not  be  a  studied  dissimula- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  individual.  It  exists,  and  very 
likely  originates,  outside  the  field  of  awareness  and  in- 
sight. 

Buried  eroticism  comes  to  the  surface  in  the  guise  of 
fear;  we  shall  meet  some  examples  of  this.  Adler  has 
built  an  entire  psychology  of  the  neuroses  upon  affective 
compensation.  He  interprets  neurotic  manifestations 
xas  miscarried  endeavors  of  the  personality  to  compensate 
for  feelings  of  inferiority.  As  the  timid  man  whistles 
to  keep  up  his  courage,  so  would  the  personality  of  the 
neurotic  overlay  the  feeling  of  inferiority  with  a  tinsel 
of  confidence  or  self-esteem.  The  symptoms  represent 
a  superficial  show  of  impudence,  foolhardiness,  or  obsti- 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EMOTION         119 

nacy,  overlying  a  fundamental  timidity,  shyness,  and  de- 
pendence.1 

There  is  no  more  important  element  in  the  diagnosis  ij  A 
of  character  than  to  distinguish  whether  a  marked  trait  I/ 
in  the  observed  person  is  compensatory,  or  fundamental,  jf 

We  are  to  be  concerned  here  with  the  more  specific 
types  of  affective  displacement.  Their  origin  is  less  evi- 
dent at  first  sight.  They  are  exemplified  by  my  friend's 
very  individual  and  marked  aversion  to  eating  chicken, 
or  by  resistances  which  I  experienced  in  1903  toward 
visiting  the  Englischer  Garten  in  Munich.  In  the  midst 
of  what  is  otherwise  an  at  least  passably  well  ordered 
affective  life,  there  crop  out  these  useless,  and  at  times 
quite  inconvenient,  disharmonies  of  affect  with  situation. 
There  is  no  general  underlying  mood  on  which  they  are  *t 
based.  Common  examples  from  normal  life  are  the  pho- 
bias for  various  harmless  organisms,  like  caterpillars, 
toads,  spiders,  cats,  and  also  snakes  (where  there  is  no  . 
knowledge  of  their  possible  harmfulness).  One  mav  ^  * 
show  inordinate  anger  at  losing  a  game  upon  which  noth-  y 
ing  is  stakt-d;  or  at  some  (really  very  good)  advertise- 
ments of  a  popular  chewing-gum;  or  resistances  toward 
reading  a  certain  magazine.  The  displaced  affect  at- 
taches specifically  to  a  single,  or  to  a  very  small  range  of 
topics.  An  unprejudiced  observer  will  usually  be  able  to 
multiply  such  examples  from  his  own  experience.2 

1  Adler,  Monats  f.  Pad.  u.  Schulpoliiik  (1910),  H.  9.    (Ref.  Pfister.) 

2  We  have  already  demonstrated  transplantations  of  feeling  in  con- 
siderable number.     In  the  previous  section  we  spoke  of  pleasures  in 
astronomy,  stamp-collecting,  "nature-healing,"  affection  for  a  nurse, 
which  were  all  exaggerated,  that  is,  not  to  be  explained  by  the  in- 
trinsic value  of  the  object.     Previously  we  had  learned   to  know 
Scheffel's  Ekkehard  as  a  remedy  for  hiccoughs;  washing  became  a 
great  state  function ;  machines,  horses,  the  nose,  the  legs  of  pigeons 
and  of  children  took  on  the  character  of  frightful  objects;  a  rubber 
tire  and  the  nipple  of  a  pump  were  endowed  with  an  irrestible  attrac- 


1*0  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

These  disharmonies  of  affect  with  apparent  situation 
are  also  quite  marked  in  dreams.  The  most  frequent 
seem  to  be  those  in  which  profound  emotion  is  aroused 
by  apparently  trivial  occurrences.  A  characteristic  in- 
stance was  quoted  in  a  previous  chapter  (p.  101),  where 
the  intense  anger  at  an  inconsequential  lapse  of  memory 
was  sufficient  to  awaken  the  sleeper.  Two  others  are  the 
following : 

Dream,  shortly  after  the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania,  and 
the  night  after  mislaying  a  cap:  A  large  ocean  liner,  not 
clearly  the  Lusitania,  is  nearing  port,  but  damaged  and  sink- 
ing, (not  clearly)  through  a  torpedo.  Dreamer,  with 
others,  wishes  to  leave  the  ship,  but  is  prevented  from  doing 
so  by  having  lost  his  cap.  Rushes  in  trepidation  to  his  state- 
room to  hunt  for  it ;  can  no  longer  find  his  stateroom.  Con- 
scious of  having  plenty  of  other  headgear,  but  must  have 
this  particular  piece.  At  conclusion,  the  ship  is  very  near 
to  land,  even  between  the  harbor  docks,  and  there  is  no 
longer  pressing  necessity  for  leaving  it. 

Dream,  spring  of  191 1 :  Dreamer  is  visiting  a  colleague, 
R.,  who  is  something  of  a  bibliophile.  R.  leaves  the  room 
for  a  moment,  and  dreamer  glances  through  one  of  his 
books.  At  first  this  seems  to  be  an  account  of  banking 
methods  of  a  century  ago,  but  transforms  into  an  account 
of  the  vengeance  taken  by  a  man  (who  thought  he  had  been 
defrauded  by  another  of  a  sum  of  money)  upon  the  latter's 
family.  This  consists  in  administering  to  them  a  compound 
consisting  of  "  some  black  substance,  arsenic  and  sand," 
which  causes  them  all  to  expire  in  great  pain.  The  margins 
of  the  pages  bear  grotesquely  appropriate  illustrations,  one 
of  them  a  skeleton  vomiting.  A  state  of  nightmare  Angst 
supervenes  during  the  reading  of  this  passage,  and  subsides 
without  the  dreamer's  waking,  as  R.  reenters.  Dreamer 
hands  the  book  to  R.,  with  words  like,  "  This  is  about  the 
limit,"  to  which  R.  makes  a  srrtfling  half-assent.  After  a 
few  other  episodes,  the  dreamer  wakes,  the  Angst  having 
entirely  subsided. 

tion :  a  kitten  and  a  gas-mantle  compulsively  stimulated  the  desire  to 
attack ;  the  figure  of  Christ  .  .  .  became  surrounded  with  tremendous 
feeling,  and  later  indifferent  again.  Pfister,  D.  psa.  Met.,  176. 


121 

In  explanation  of  these  common  affective  displacements 
in  dreams  it  has  been  suggested  that  they  are  based  on  a 
general  loss  of  the  standards  of  affective  response  which  w 
govern  our  waking  life.  This  does  not  seem  the  best  ex- 
planation, because  the  affective  life  of  dreams  is  not  a 
generally  disordered  one.  Regularly  we  react  to  the  nat- 
ural events  of  dream  life  as  we  would  to  the  natural  events 
of  waking  life.  When  there  is  such  affective  displace- 
ment in  a  dream,  it  regularly  refers  to  some  narrow, 
specific  topic,  as  in  the  first  dream  above  to  the  loss  of  the 
cap,  in  the  second  to  the  contents  of  the  book.  These 
emotional  displacements  stand  out  so  unquestionably  just 
because  the  affective  life  of  dreams  is  not  generally  differ- 
ent from  that  of  waking  life. 

In  the  second  chapter  we  saw  that  play  on  the  sound 
of  words,  which  is  represented  in  the  conduct  of  the 
savage,  in  the  ideas  of  children,  in  the  symbols  of  our 
dreams,  and  in  shaping  the  delusions  of  mental  disease, 
also  develops  a  special  kind  of  wit  in  the  form  of  the 
pun.  Affective  displacement,  likewise  traceable  in  normal 
life,  in  dreams  and  in  the  psychoses,  develops,  when  arti- 
ficially employed,  another  and  higher  type  of  wit.  Satire, 
and  its  lesser  brethren,  irony,  travesty  and  parody,  are 
the  children  of  affective  displacement. 

In  the  Lilliput  and  Laputa  of  Swift,  the  satire  consists 
in  giving  to  trivial  ideas  an  air  of  consequence  and 
solemnity.  Rabelais,  on  the  other  hand,  tends  more  to 
satirize  the  pompous  and  self-sufficient  by  representing  it 
in  comic  and  ridiculous  terms.  The  scheme  of  satirical 
wit  is  to  present  a  mental  content  ordinarily  associated 
with  one  kind  of  emotion,  but  in  such  a  form  as  to  arouse 
with  it  the  opposite  emotion.  Thus  Lanigan's  well- 
known  "  Threnody,"  concerning  the  death  of  a  potentate 


122  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

called  the  Ahkoond  of  Stvat,  has  the  elegiac  meter,  and  for 
the  most  part  elegiac  diction,  but  displaces  the  naturally 
tragic  note  through  an  interspersal  of  puns,  in  the  follow- 
ing manner : 

.  .  .  For  the  Ahkoond  I  mourn, 

Who  wouldn't? 
He  strove  to  disregard  the  message  stern, 

But  he  Ahkood  n't.  .  .  . 

Tears  shed,  tears  shed  like  water, 
Your  great  Ahkoond  is  dead! 
That  Swats  the  matter !  .  .  . 

He  sees  with  larger,  other  eyes 

Athwart  all  earthly  mysteries  — 
He  knows  what's  Swat. 

The  conventional  parody  takes  something  associated 

with  respectful  emotions,  preserves  enough  of  its  form  to 

.  clearly  suggest  this  original,  and  introduces  elements  that, 

<   like  the  puns  above,  arouse  humorous  feelings.     Thus  the 

verse  form  of  Hiawatha  has  lent  itself  largely  to  parody 

such  as  the  well  known  one  of  Mudjokivis  and  the 

mittens. 

Music,  as  well  as  language-forms,  serves  as  the  original 
for  parody.  Parodies  in  the  form  of  music  can  be  ap- 
preciated only  by  the  very  musical,  but  an  effectively  witty 
(displacement  can  often  be  made  from  emotional  music  by 
trivial  words  attached  to  it.  Thus  the  nonsense  quatrains 
"  I'd  rather  have  fingers  than  toes  "  and  "  I  wish  that  my 
room  had  a  floor,"  gain  distinctly  in  humorous  value 
through  being  set  to  the  hymn-tune  of  "  St.  Denis " 
("Heirs  of  unending  life").  Another  nonsense  stanza 
("  See  those  two  ducks  at  play  ")  has  grown  up  about  the 
tune  of  "Moscow"  ("Come  Thou  Almighty  King"). 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EMOTION          123 

The  most  familiar  motive  from  "  Carmen  "  has  been  set 
to  some  doggerel  beginning  : 

Toreador,  he  smoka  da  bum  cigar 
Standa  on  da  corner,  hoppa  on  da  car,  etc. 

This  interchange  jof  the  sublime  and  the_ridiculous  is 
•what  constitutes  wit  through  altective  displacement.  In 
most  direct  parodies,  like  the  above  instances  from  Hi- 
awatha, the  original  element  is  the  sublime,  and  the  dis- 
placing element  is  the  ridiculous.  A  further  example  is 
the  pidgin  English  version  of  "  Excelsior."  Though  the 
result  is  the  same,  it  is  a  somewhat  different  mode  of  trav- 
esty to  start  with  a  trivial  episode  and  clothe  it  in  digni- 
fied phraseology.  This  is  the  same  difference  above  noted 
between  Swift  and  Rabelais. 

Stephen  Leacock  is  a  prose  master  of  such  wit  through 
indifferent  situation  and  affectful  response. 

I  passed  a  flower  in  my  walk  today.  It  grew  in  the 
meadow  beside  the  river  bank.  It  stood  dreaming  on  a  long 
stem.  I  knew  its  name.  It  was  a  Tchupvskja.  I  love 
beautiful  names.  I  leaned  over  and  spoke  to  it.  I  asked 
it  if  my  heart  would  ever  know  love.  It  said  it  thought  so. 
On  my  way  home  I  passed  an  onion.  It  lay  upon  the  road. 
Someone  had  stepped  upon  its  stem  and  crushed  it.  How 
it  must  have  suffered.  I  placed  it  in  my  bosom.  All 
night  it  lay  beside  my  pillow  .  .  .  Today  in  my  walk  I 
found  a  cabbage.  It  lay  in  a  corner  of  the  hedge.  Cruel 
boys  had  chased  it  there  with  stones.  It  was  dead  when 
I  lifted  it  up.  Beside  it  was  an  egg.  It  too  was  dead. 
Ah,  how  I  wept.  .  .  .  ("Nonsense  Novels,"  116-117, 
119.) 

The  "  Little  Willie  "  verses  which  enjoyed  a  recent 
popularity  are  probably  the  simplest  form  in  which  the 
mechanism  of  affective  displacement  has  ever  served  the 
ends  of  wit.  They  consist  uniformly  in  depicting  a  tragic 


/ 
v 
^r.    / 


MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

situation  with  an  indifferent  or  comic  reaction  to  it.    The 
following  are  familiar  examples :  3 

Willie  hung  his  baby  sister, 
r  She  was  dead  before  we  missed  her. 

"  Willie's  always  up  to  tricks ! 
Ain't  he  cute  ?    He's  only  six !  " 

Willie  fell  down  the  elevator ; 
He  wasn't  found  till  two  weeks  later. 
All  the  neighbors  said,  "  Gee  whiz ! 
What  a  spoiled  child  Willie  is !  " 

This  artificial  displacement  of  affect  is  decidedly  the 
J  chief  mental  mechanism  of  wit.  We  have  illustrated  the, 
natural  occurrences  of  affective  displacement  in  normal 
•  life,  and  in  dreams,  and  have  mentioned  it  in  the 
psychoses.  We  saw  that  these  displacements  were  some- 
times explicable  on  the  ground  of  underlying  moods  like 
elation  or  melancholy.  But  we  found  other  instances  in 
which  this  facile  interpretation  is  clearly  impossible.  The 
intense  distaste  for  eating  chicken,  the  aversion  to  the 
Englischer  Garten,  my  marked  prejudice  in  favor  of 
any  one  who  has  a  certain  manner  of  speech,  and  all  such 
specific  likes  and  dislikes,  must  have  originated  in  mental 
events  bearing  specifically  upon  the  ideas  with  which  they 
are  associated. 

For  example,  my  friend's  aversion  to  eating  chicken 
originates  with  an  unpleasant  experience  which  he  had 
with  one  of  the  species  in  early  childhood.  The  writer 
had  no  aversion  to  the  Englischer  Garten  as  a  small  child, 
until  one  day  some  one  to  whom  he  was  attached  nearly 
incurred  arrest  by  picking  for  him  a  verboten  flower  that 
he  wanted.  When  next  to  be  taken  to  the  Englischer 

8  A  collection  of  such  verses  hears  the  title,  "  Ruthless  Rhymes  for 
Heartless  Homes."  Eugene  Field's  "A  Little  Peach  in  the  Orchard 
Grew,"  is  a  more  classical  example  of  this  type  of  displacement 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EMOTION         125 

Garten  he  objected,  suppressing  the  reason,  reluctantly 
admitting  the  truth  of  the  Gouvernante's  surmise: 
"  Weil  man  da  nicht  Blumen  pflnecken  darf? ''  This 
was  the  origin  of  a  resistance  which  was  still  operative 
on  revisiting  Munich  some  thirteen  years  later,  and 
through  which  the  place  seemed  the  more  appreciated  upon 
rediscovery.  A  prejudice  against  a  young  and  popular 
acquaintance  is  based  upon  the  fact  that  superficially  her  r^y 
appearance  brought  to  mind  a  boy  of  far  from  admirable  ^jl 
character,  whom  the  writer  knew  as  a  child.  The  preju-^ 
dice  in  favor  of  people  with  a  certain  brogue  originates 
with  very  good  friends  who  have  this  accent.  Walter 
Dill  Scott  describes  how  he  greatly  enjoyed  some  indiffer- 
ent stories  read  during  the  playing  of  music  of  which  he 
was  especially  fond.  He  termed  it  a  "  fusion  "  of  the  af- 
fects associated  with  the  songs  and  the  stories.  (His 
practical  application  of  the  process  was  the  principle  of 
never  allowing  to  creep  into  an  advertisement  matter  that 
in  any  way  brings  an  unpleasant  feeling  to  the  reader. 
For,  no  matter  what  the  logical  relation  is,  e.  g.,  insects 
trying  in  vain  to  get  inside  a  food  package,  the  unpleasant 
feeling  will  "  fuse  "  with  the  idea  of  the  food,  and  make 
the  whole  memory  of  the  advertised  article  an  unpleasant 
one.  One  should  rather  group  pleasant  associations  \j 
about  the  article,  as  pictures  of  persons  greatly  enjoying  jj' 
the  food.) 

The  general  fact  which  these  cases  illustrate  is  as  fol- 
lows: If  an  experience  is  associated  with  a  pronounced 
affect  or  emotion,  of  .whaievex  character,  that-affect.  or 
emotion  will  tend  to  become  associated  also  with  othe,r 
experiences  themselves  connected  with  the  first  experi- 
ence. Because  my  friend  had  an  unpleasant  experience 
connected  with  a  chicken,  he  now  dislikes  chicken  as  food. 


126  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

Because  the  writer  had  an  unpleasant  experience  associ- 
ated with  the  Englischer  Garten,  he  many  years  later  felt 
a  distaste  for  going  there.  Because  the  child  has  once 
made  himself  sick  with  walnuts,  he  has  a  persistent  aver- 
sion to  eating  walnuts  thereafter.  Thus  the  affective 
displacements  in  the  reactions  to  the  chicken,  to  the  Eng- 
fischer  Garten,  to  Miss  X,  to  persons  with  a  certain 
dialect,  and  to  the  songs,  are  a  "  transfer  epcp  "  from  a 
related  and  originally  affect  ful  experience.  These  trans- 
ferences have  been  observed  in  different  settings,  and  dif- 
ferent names  applied  to  them.  Scott  called  it  fusion; 
Ferenczi  and  others,  dealing  with  its  pathology,  have 
called  it  Uebertragung,  from  which  American  writers 


j 

V 

'•e 


have  taken  the  term  tx^^^f^  The  original  experi- 
ence may  be  said  to  "load"4  associated  ideas  with^an 
affect  that  does  not  properly  belong  to  them.  My  later 
visit  to  the  foreign  park,  objectively  indifferent,  is 
"  loaded  "  with  unpleasant  affect,  derived  from  an  un- 
pleasant experience  in  connection  with  this  park  many 
years  before. 

Thus  one  way  in  which  affective  displacement  may  oc- 
cur is  through  loading  from  unpleasant  original  experi- 
nces.  Somewhat  as  an  intensely  hot  or  cold  object  will 
heat  or  cool  objects  around  it,  so  will  intense  emotion  as- 
sociated with  an  idea  radiate  emotion  to  ideas  associated 
with  it. 

The  simplest  way  in  which  such  transference  could  take 
place  would  be  this.  When  the  idea  of  revisiting  the 
Englischer  Garten  comes  up,  it  calls  to  mind  the  previous 
experience,  and  this  arouses,  in  connection  with  itself,  its 
unpleasant  affect.  There  is  no  reason  why  this  should 
not  happen  in  any  such  case.  It  probably  happens  in  very 

*  Cf.  Pfuter,  "  Gef  uhlsbelabtung,"  D.  psa.  Met.,  173. 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EMOTION          127 

few.  The  visit  to  the  Englischer  Garten  was  unpleasantly 
anticipated  without  any  immediate  awareness  of  the  pre- 
vious visit,  though  of  course  it  did  from  time  to  time 
come  to  mind.  The  prejudice  against  Miss  X.  was  evi- 
dent some  weeks  before  its  unquestionable  origin  became 
clear  to  the  writer.  Although  in  these  cases  the  original 
experience  still  comes  to  awareness,  it  need  not  do  so. 
The  loaded  affect  is  manifest  without  any  immediate 
awareness  of  its  op'fpnal 

Jnquestionabiy  there  are  many  other  cases  of  "  un- 
reasonable "  likes  and  dislikes,  for  which  no  such  originat- 
ing experience  can  be  recalled  at  all : 

I  do  not  love  thee,  Dr.  Fell, 
The  reason  why  I  cannot  tell. 

This  opens  the  question,  whether  the  dislike  of  Dr.  Fell 
is  to  be  traced  to  an  unpleasant  experience,  say,  of  some 
person  who  looks  like  Dr.  Fell,  even  though  one  has  no 
longer  any  awareness  of  such  experience.  We  know  that 
there  does  not  need  to  be  any  immediate  memory  of  the 
original  experience,  for  affects  loaded  from  it  to  persist. 
Need  there  be  any  awareness-memory  of  it  at  all? 

In  answer,  there  is  good  evidence  that  this  loading  01 
transference  of  affects  occurs,  when  the  original  experi- 
ence of  it  has  been,  in  the  accepted  sense  of  the  words, 
completely  forgotten.  A  mental  impression  is  said  to  be 
forgotten,  when  it  can  no  longer  be  brought  to  awareness ; 
when  it  is  no  longer  one  of  the  ideas  which  form  our 
conscious  knowledge;  when  it  can  no  longer  be  aroused 
as  a  part  of  what  Janet  and  Prince  have  called  our  per- 
sonal consciousness.  Now,  as  we  shall  later  see  more 
fully,  there  are  some  mental  conditions  (such  as  hypnosis, 
and  the  passive  states  favorable  to  psychoanalysis),  in 


128  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

which  things  can  be  remembered,  which  jire  forgotten  to 
the  ordinary  wakingjife.  By  peneFrating  to  these  inac- 
»cessible  stores  of  memory,  it  has  been  possible  to  identify 
forgotten  experiences,  from  which  ideas  that  should  have 
been  indifferent  in  daily  life  were  still  being  "loaded." 
An  instructive  example  is  the  following,  given  by  Tait : 

A  subject  had  an  intense  and  unmotivated  dislike  of  the 
color  brown.  He  was  instructed  to  start  with  the  idea 
brown,  and  to  write  words  at  the  rate  of  forty  per  minute, 
to  the  beats  of  a  metronome.  At  the  twjnjtyjjiinth  and 
thirtieth^  beats  came  a  block,  with  no  words  written. 
Then  starting  again  with  the  word  brown,  there  came, 
after  about  thirty  words,  the  last  few  of  which  deal  with 
a  recent  dissecting  room  episode,  the  following  succession : 

Sore,  blow,  strike,  ivound,  die,  man,  strike,  jaw,  blood,  red, 
dark,  red,  brown,  blood,  man,  strike,  fall,  back,  blood.  .  .  . 

At  this  point  there  comes  back  to  the  subject  a  hitherto 
lost  memory  of  a  head-injury  with  bleeding,  that  had  oc- 
curred m  childhood,  and  which  is  described  in  some  de- 
tail. There  is  no  reason  to  question  Tait's  interpreta- 

•  -^'  .   ..      —     •— ^        .  '  •—      —  —  —      ••— -      ••     •     — "         I        ••!!!•> 

\ \  tion  that  the  horror  of  _the_reddish-brown  blood  seen  at 
\\that  time  racliated  through  later  Ijfe  over  brown  colors  in 
i  general.     In  certain  color-experiments  this  subject  notes 
that  a  feeling  of  hatred  accompanied  the  remembrance  of 
the  browns,  "  which  spread  itself  over  the  whole  experi- 
ment with  colors."     But  the  original  association  of  brown 
and  unpleasantness  had  been  buried  out  of  memory.     A 
special  procedure  was  necessary  to  bring  it  back. 

A  case  described  by  Morton  Prince  had  a  phobia  for 
towers  and  church  steeples,  especially  those  in  which  bells 
might  ring.  As  in  the  previous  case,  no  associations  to 
explain  the  anomalous  emotion  were  present  to  ordinary 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EMOTION          139 

awareness.  Memories  elicited  under  hypnotic  conditions 
threw  no  light  upon  its  origin.  It  was  finally  determined 
through  the  medium  of  automatic  writing.  While  the 
patient  was  under  hypnosis,  narrating  some  irrelevant 
memories  of  her  mother,  her  hand,  into  which  a  pencil 
had  been  put,  wrote  rapidly : 

"  G.  .  .  .  M.  .  .  .  church  and  my  father  took  my  mother 
to  Bi  .  .  .  where  she  died  and  we  went  to  Br  .  .  .  and 
they  cut  my  mother.  I  prayed  and  cried  all  the  time  that 
she  would  live  and  the  church  bells  were  always  ringing  and 
I  hated  them." 

She  wept  while  writing,  but  did  not  know  why,  nor 
what  her  hand  had  written.  After  coming  out  of  the 
hypnosis,  the  patient  was  questioned  as  to  the  events  re- 
ferred to  in  the  writing.  A  clear  account  of  them  was 
given,  not  accompanied  by  special  emotion,  nor  in  the// 
childish  phraseology  of  the  writing.  / 

Her  mother,  who  was  seriously  ill,  was  taken  to  a  great 
surgeon  to  be  operated  upon.  .  .  .  The  chimes  in  the  tower 
of  the  church,  which  was  close  to  her  hotel,  sounded  every 
quarter  hour;  they  got  on  her  [the  daughter's]  nerves;  she 
hated  them ;  she  could  not  bear  to  hear  them ;  and  while  she 
was  praying  they  added  to  her  anguish.  Ever  since  this 
time  the  ringing  of  bells  has  continued  to  cause  a  feeling 
of  anguish.  .  .  .  She  could  not  explain  why  she  had  never 
before  connected  her  phobia  with  the  episode  she  had  de- 
scribed. 

This  case,  like  that  of  Tait,  presents  an  affectful  re- 
action to  a  properly  indifferent  stimulus,  with  a  definite, 
though    forgotten,   mental   cause.     It   brings   out   more 
clearly  an  additional  feature  of  interest.     "  So  long  as 
jj  the  memories_>yere  described  from  the  viewpoint  JQ{  the 
'  maliired  adult  personal  consciousness,  there  was  no  emo- 
tion."     In  the  "  adult  personal  consciousness  "  the  epi- 
'  sode  in  which  the  phobia  originated  is  not  loaded  with 

10  /( 

C 


130  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

affect;  bell-towers  are  so  loaded.     The  affect  originally 

associated  with  the  experience  has  apparently  left  it.     It 

has  now  no  abnormal  emotion  for  waking  awareness.     It 

is  "  de-emotionalized,"  as  Ernest  Jones  suggests.     The 

emotion  has  been  transferred,  veritably  "  siphoned  "  from 

the  original  ideas  connected  with  the  mother's  illness,  to 

J  the  idea  of  towers  in  which  bells  may  ring.5     The  original 

idea  is  drained  dry  of  the  affect  with  which  the  properly 

indifferent  one  is  "loaded."     Affective  transference  can 

^  thus  go  to  much  greater  lengths  than  the  simple  "  fusion  " 

described  by  Scott.     We  can  no  longer  use  the  simile  of 

^v^body  radiating  its  temperature  to  its  surroundings.     It 

j|    is  a  complete  Uebertragung  ("carrying-over"),  which 

.   empties  of  affect  the  primary  idea,  and  loads  the  secondary 

I    one. 

From  the  outset  we  have  regarded  affects  as  independ- 
ent mental  processes.     They  are  associated  with  ideas  and 
perceptions  by  the  same  principles  of  association  that  bind 
ideas  and  perceptions  to  the  motor  discharges  of  vol- 
funtary  behavior.     In  this  way,  the  affect  related  to  some 
:;  definite  experience  could  naturally  become  associated  with 
i  perceptions  and  ideas  related  to  that  experience. 

The  essential  thing  is_tq  conceive  tj^  emotional  pro- 
cess as  a  reaction^  When  we  perceive  an  emotion,  we 
perceive  a  physiological  process ;  but  opinions  differ  as  to 
its  nature.  The  James-Lange  theory  suggested  changes 
outside  the  nervous  substance,  as  in  the  blood-vessels  or 
glands.  A  strong  objection  to  the  latter  view  has  lately 
been  brought  forward  by  the  work  of  Cannon,  who  finds 
i  that  the  glandular  accompaniments  of  varying  emotions, 
such  as  fear  or  anger,  do  not  essentially  differ.  There  is 

5  Prince  follows  it  through  many  intermediary  ideas,  which  need 
not  be  gone  into  here.    Cf.  "  The  Unconscious/   38gff. 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EMOTION          181 

a  further  objection  to  supposing  that  the  process  we  per- 
ceive in  emotion  is  a  vasomotor  one.     The  time  requisite 
for  vasomotor  responses  is  about  two  seconds.     If  the 
emotion  is  the  perception  of  this  vasomotor  activity,  it 
should  require  at  least  two  seconds  to  perceive  an  emotion, 
after  the  thing  arousing  the  emotion  is  presented.     Naka- 
shima  °  appears  to  have  found  the  actual  time  required  for 
the  perception  of  an  emotion  to  be  less  than  this,7  and 
not  much  greater  than  the  time  required  for  reacting  to 
the  sensation.     Blue  would  thus  take  only  a  little  longer 
time  to  look  pleasant  than  it  does  to  look  blue.     This  is  in 
further  accord  with  the  view  of  Cannon,  that  when  we 
perceive  an  emotion,  what  we  perceive  is  something  going 
on  in  nerve-centers.     The  feeling  of  pleasantness  is  the  h  \/ 
awareness  of  a  certain^central  process,  as  much  as  the  ij 
image  of  one's  breakfa«t  t^blp  is  t*1*  awareness  .pf  anntfrp f  I 
process  in  the  brain.     This  central  process  is  the  emo-  ' 
tional  reaction. 

The  burnt  child  dreads  the  fire;  that  is,  having  once 
been  hurt  by  the  heat  of  the  flame,  he  is  later  frightened 
by  the  perception  of  its  light.  Throughout  mental  phe- 
nomena there  obtains  such  a  principle,  that  a  reaction 
proper  to  a  certain  (primary)  stimulus,  may  later  be 
aroused  by  another  (secondary)  stimulus,  which  second- 
ary stimulus  has  been  in  some  particular  association  with  frrn^\ 
the  primary  one.  The  application  of  this  principle  to 
emotional  reactions  is  what  we  are  calling  affective  trans-  j^, '  * 
ference.  Let  us  follow  it  quickly  through  some  of  its 
other  manifestations,  as  studied  in  the  laboratories  of  the 
Russian  investigators,  Pawlow  and  von  Bechterew. 

6  Am.  J.  Psych.,  20  (1909),  187-193;  Psychol.  Rev.  16  (1909),  303- 

339- 

7  Cf.  also  von  Bechterew,  Objekthe  Psychohfie  (1913).  no. 


132  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

If  one  administers  to  an  animal  an  acid-tasting  sub- 
stance producing  directly  a  salivary  reflex,  and  at  the 
same  time  shows  the  animal  a  flash  of  light  for  example, 
later  on  the  flash  of  light  alone  will  suffice  to  elicit  the 
salivary  reaction.  If  the  prick  of  a  needle  has  elicited  the 
reflex  withdrawal  of  the  hand,  then  a  simple  touch,  pre- 
viously ineffective,  will  also  elicit  the  withdrawal.  If  one 
receives  an  electric  stimulus  eliciting  the  plantar  reflex  and 
at  the  same  time  is  given  a  color-stimulus,  later  on  the 
color-stimulus  alone  will  elicit  the  plantar  reflex.  The 
same  is  found  for  responses  that  are  not  reflex,  but  con- 
ventionalized. If  Jbgnding  the^  ringer  is  required  as  re- 
ijsponse  to  a  given  Jight^jind  this  light  is  combined  with 
y ascertain  jjound,  the  sound  itself  will  come  to  induce  the 
I  bending  of  the  ringer.  Or  the  sound  may  be  used  as  the 
primary  "stimulus,  and  then,  a  secondary  light-stimulus 
being  combined  with  it,  the  light-stimulus  alone  will  in- 
duce the  bending  of  the  finger.  Here  the  association  be- 
tween the  light  and  sound  stimuli  (by  which  they  induce 

,    the  same  reaction)  is  established  through  their ;  sjnuiltane.- 

v  PUS, occurrence.  But  a  less  direct  association  may  also  be 
effective.  The  regular  finger-response  to  a  rhythmical 
sound  may,  after  the  cessation  of  the  sound-stimulus,  be 
again  elicited  by  lights  which  are  associated  with  the 
sound-stimulus  simply  in  that  they  follow  the  rhythm  of 
the  sound,  (von  Bechterew.) 
Ij  Responses  which  jhe_associatecLsecondary  stimulus  has 

j  thus  derived  from  the  primary  stimulus _  are  jglled jcondi- 

il  Honed  QT associative  responses. 

"~ln  affective  transference  it  is  an  emotional  reaction  that 
is  substituted  for  the  glandular  one  in  the  case  of  the  sali- 
vary response,  or  the  voluntary  reaction  in  the  case  of  the 
bending  of  the  finger.  There  are,  however,  two  rather 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EMOTION         133 

noteworthy  differences  between  the  conditioned  motor 
responses  just  cited  and  the  conditioned  responses  of 
affective  transference.  Von  Bechterew  makes  the  point 
that  the  responses  which  are  madejp  the  secondary  stim- 
ulus ajonejjo  jiQt^,as-a.4^kT  ^each-thfLjntensity  of  the 
res£onses_made_tp  the_4irimary  stimulus.  Thus,  the  effect 
on  breathing,  of  a  light-stimulus  secondarily  associated 
with  a  sound,  is  less  pronounced  than  the  effect  on  breath- 
ing of  the  primary  sound-stimulus.  This  rule  does  not 
obtajn  jn_affectiveJtransf€4=€«€e.  We  saw  that  the  origi- 
nally affectful  memories  (primary  stimulus)  in  the  bell- 
tower  case  had  lost  their  affect,  were  "  de-emotionalized  " 
(p.  130).  Their  affect  had  been  siphoned  to  bell- 
towers  (secondary  stimulus).  In_these  siphoning_|m> 
cesses  the  primary  exgeriencejs  drained  of^jtsjirfect  and 
the  secondary  experience  becomes  loaded  with  the  entire 
emod<^aljresjDpjnsjijor^ 

perience.  Indeed,  it  is  not  impossible  that  there  are  ac- 
cessions to  the  original  affect;  so  that  the  secondary  ex- 
perience now  carries  more  affect  than  ever  attached  to  the 
original  one. 

Again,  to  establish  a  conditioned  response  in  the  above 
motor  fields,  a  certain  amount  of  drilling  appears  neces- 
sary. The  secondary  stimulus  is  systematically  combined 
with  the  primary  one,  five,  ten,  twenty  or  more  times, 
in  order  to  establish  conditioned  responses  to  the  second- 
ary stimulus.8  This  seems  much  less  the  case  with  af- 
fective transference.  Scott  enjoyed  his  stories  immedi- 
ately on  hearing  them  with  the  liked  music.  Tait's  case 
did  not  require  a  series  of  bloody  head-injuries  to  implant 
a  dislike  of  brown  colors.  As  the  child  need  be  burned 

8  Watson,  "  The  Place  of  the  Conditioned  Reflex  in  Psychology," 
Psychol.  Rev.  23  (1916),  96-97- 


134  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

by  the  fire  only  once  to  dread  it,  so  there  may  be  a  pro- 
nounced transfer  of  likes  and  dislikes  to  secondary  stim- 
uli, though  these  have  been  but  infrequently  or  remotely 
associated  with  original,  primary  ones. 

Both  the  above  points  indicate  that  the  principles  of  as- 
sociation do  not  in  themselves  cover  the  facts  of  affec- 
tive transference.  In  the  first  place,  they  would  simply 
j  endow_jtlxe^-loaded,  secondary  experience  with  the  same 
kind  Qf  affect  as  was  carried  by  the  primary,  originating 
experience.  They  would  not  provide  for  the  siphoning 
process,  in  which  the  loaded  experience  has  a  greater  de- 
gree of  this  affect  than  is  retained  by  the  originating  one. 

In  the  next  place,  we  saw  also  in  our  studies  of  sym- 
bolic association  (Chapter  III),  that  any  association 
might  give  rise  to  symbolism,  but  only  under  certain  con- 
ditions was  this  path  taken.  In  like  manner,  any  path  of 
association  is  also  an  avenue  by  which  affective  reactions 
may  invite  transfer.  But  if  this  path  were  always  open, 
.  affects  would  siphon  indiscriminately  between  any  asso- 
ciated perceptions,  and  our  emotional  life  would  have  no 
stability  at  all.  So  that,  while  the  paths  of  association 
provide  ways  along  which  affects  are  transferred,  they 
do  not  provide  the  "  motive  "  power  which  makes  the 
,  transfer.  This  relation,  not  well  understood,  may  be 
1  partially  surveyed. 

The  "  siphoning  "  of  affects  is  quite  frequent  in  affec- 
tive transference.  The  memory  of  the  original  Eng- 
lischer  Garten  episode  was  clearly  less  unpleasant  than  the 
transferred  resistance  to  revisiting  the  place.  Tait's  case 
had  a  phobia  for  brown  colors;  not  for  a  barn,  for  blood, 
or  for  head-injury.  The  originating  experience  had 
been  lost;  its  affect  was  siphoned  into  the  experience  of 
browns. 


.  CONTINUITY  OF  EMOTION         13S 


. 

prime  condition  of  affective  siphoning  appears  to  be 


^     hat  an  original  affect ful  memory  fades  from  awareness.      . ^ 
*cciAs  this  happens,  any  associated  experience  loaded  from 
<**}  the  original  experience  takes  on  greater  affect  in  aware- 
ness than  now  attaches  to  the  original  experience.     For    « 

example :  the  unestimable  boy-friend  has  played  no  part  in  ^gt^Ti 
the  writer's  life  for  many  years;  he  was  seldom  thought  «/» 
of,  and  without  special  emotion.  Now  comes  the  young  &ffa 
woman  resembling  him,  and  lights  up  an  antagonism  to 

r*s  r  S 

herself  greater  than  is  now  felt  toward  the  original,  or  f 
is  remembered  to  have  ever  been  felt.     As  shown  also      "'  . 
in  Tait's  case,  the  affect  attaching  to  an  experience  fad- 
ing or  lost  from  awareness  is  in  unstable  equilibrium. 
It  is  ready  to  siphon  at  once  into  some  associated  experi- 
ence that  is  preserved,  like  the  brown  colors  in  Tait's  case, 
the  bell-towers  in  Prince's.     In  the  case  of  the  boy  and 
Miss  X,  the  affect  siphons  into  a  new  experience,  in  which 
the  conditions  for  associating  the  experiences  are  met  by 
the  resemblance  of  the  two  persons. 

Ferenczi  calls  such  affects  attaching  to  lost  experiences 
"  free-floating,"  and  remarks,  in  a  different  terminology, 
that  the  personality  appears  not  to  tolerate  such  free- 
floating  affects;  they  tend  to  attach  to  something  else. 
The  apparently  unmotivated  waste  of  affect  is  nothing  but 
a  transference,  in  which  long  forgotten  psychic  experi- 
ences exaggerate  the  proper  reaction. 

The  outstanding  feature  of  these  affective  displace-  ; 

-        -* —      ;l 

'  ments  is  that  an  experience  may  fade  or  be  lost  fromJ 
jj  awareness,  while  its  affect  persists.     Apparently,  it  does 
.  not  necessarily  attach  to  something  else  that  is  in  aware- 
ness: witness  the  phobias,  which  may  be  intense  though 
the  sufferer  can  assign  no  cause  for  them.     A  mental 
cause  of  which  the  patient  is  not  aware  may  afterward  be 


136  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

determined.9  Usually,  however,  the  affect  attaches  to 
something  else  which  is  in  awareness. 

On  examining  the  conditions  in  which  affectful  mem- 
ories disappear  from  awareness,  one  cannot  fail  to  be 
struck  by  the  frequency  with  which  the  affects  involved 
are  of  an  unpleasant  character.  Nearly  all  the  instances 
above  quoted  were  of  this  sort.  It  does  not  seem  possi- 
ble to  escape  the  conclusion  that  there  is  something  in  the 
very  unpleasantness  of  these  ideas  that  helps  their  dis- 
appearance from  awareness.  The  psychoanalytic  school, 
at  least,  has  made  no  attempt  to  escape  it  ;  quite  the  con- 
trary. One  of  their  fundamental  tenets  is  the  repression 
of  disagreeable  ideas  as  such.  Although  the  idea  be  re- 
pressed through  its  unpleasant  affect,  the  affect  itself  does' 
not  remain  submerged.  It  comes  to  awareness  again, 
"  loaded  "  on  to  some  otherwise  indifferent  idea.  Then 
one  naturally  would  expect  that  this  "  loaded  "  idea  would 
be  equally  subject  to  repression  for  its  unpleasantness.  A 
great  deal  of  forgetting  may  be,  and  has  been,  interpreted 
as  the  result  of  association  with  unpleasant  experiences. 
In  the  cases  of  phobias  for  bell-towers,  and  for  browns, 
,-Jiowever,  it  is  clear  that  the  primary  unpleasant  experience 
was  repressed,  but  not  the  "  loaded  "  one.  Unpleasant- 
njss  may  be  an  important  cause  of  repression,  or  loss  from 
awareness,  but  it  is  not,  of  itself^  a_5ur£cient  cause. 

This  repression  of  an  experience  from  awareness,  with 

the  accompanying  transfer  of  its  affect  to  something  else, 

^i    accounts  especially  for  the  displacement  of  unpleasant  af- 

fects.    If  a  pleasant  affect  is  transferred,  there  is  not 

•%   the  same  loss  of  the  original  memory  from  awareness. 

One  may,  indeed,  have  a  feeling  of  pleasantness  while  un- 

aware of  the  underlying  cause  of  this  feeling,  just  as  one 

•  Prince,  "  The  Unconscious,"  29. 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EMOTION         137 

may  have  an  unexplained  phobia;  but  the  cases  of  it  are 
not  so  striking. 

Two  characteristic  examples  of  the  transference  of 
pleasant  affects  have  been  cited.  The  songs  and  stories 
of  Walter  Dill  Scott,  and  the  pleasure  of  the  writer  in 
hearing  a  certain  brogue  belong  to  this  class.  Here  both 
the  original  and  the  loaded  experience  are  present  to 
awareness.  They  may  be  conceived  as  "  fusion "  or 
"  radiation  "  of  affects,  because  the  pleasantness  of  the 
loaded  experience  is  not  greater  than  that  of  the  origi- 
nal experience.  It  is  not  a  siphoning  which  drains  the 
original  experience  of  affect. 

The  siphoning  of  unpleasant  affects,  being  often  ac- 
companied by  the  loss  from  awareness  of  what  we  should 
expect  to  remember,  has  perhaps  attracted  an  undue  share 
of  attention  from  the  siphoning  of  pleasant  affects,  which  ^ 
is  not  especially  characterized  by  repression  of  the  original 
experience.  Wrhen  a  pleasant  affect  is  siphoned  from  one 
experience  to  another,  the  memory  of  both  is  regularly 
retained.  In  this  form,  affective  transference  is  one  of 
the  large  dynamic  factors  in  human  life. 

To  illustrate  by  a  crude  but  clear  example :  a  young  man, 
quoted  by  Sadger,  presented  all  through  his  life  an  intense 
interest  for  the  urinary  function.  It  led  him  to  grotesque 
perversions  (e.g.,  collecting  the  urine  of  boys  in  sponges 
and  conveying  them  to  his  mouth)  ;  an  especial  desire  was 
to  watch  boys  urinating.  It  filled  somewhat  the  same 
place  as  the  sexual  interest  fills  in  normal  persons.  Ex-  I 
cept  for  getting  food  he  appeared  to  have  no  more  f unda-  I 
mental  interest.  S_uch  a  trend  is  obviously^ unsuited  ior 
proper  adaptation  to  life.  It  has  infinite  possibilities  of 
trouble  for  him  and  those  who  surround  him.  But,  by 
the  side  of  these  trends,  he  showed  some  others  clearly 


1«8  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

associated  with  the  urinary  interest.  At  the  age  of  two 
and  one-half  years,  his  greatest  joy  was  in  the  indefatig- 
able watering  of  plants  with  a  little  water  can  he  had  suc- 
ceeded in  begging.  At  three  and  one-half  years,  one  of 
his  Christmas  presents  was  a  longed  for  toy  pump.  It 
alone  delighted  him  for  the  whole  evening.  At  four 
years,  he  must  go  to  every  pump  in  the  watering  place  his 
family  visited,  and  work  it  himself.  He  knew  every 
pump  in  the  town ;  sprinkling  carts  were  another  fad.  In 
later  years  came  a  more  serious  fondness  for  every  kind 
of  aquatic  sport ;  it  especially  delighted  him  to  be  dashed 
over  with  spray  from  a  moving  boat.  Any  of  these  in- 
terests had  genuine  potential  usefulness.  They  lead  to 
success  in  horticulture,  in  hydraulic  engineering,  in  navi- 
gation. In  a  better  balanced  individual,  the  abnormal 
interests  attaching  to  urinary  functions  would  be  trans- 
*  ferred  to  such  useful  activities  as  these.  Thus  Jones 
makes  mention  of  cases  in  which  these  and  associated 

4v        ^       ' 

<-j  interests  have  delevoped  into  bridge-building,  architec- 
-^  ture,  sculpture,  type  moulding,  cookery.  The  difficulty 
!  with  Jhenatigrit_is  that  no  sufficient  transfer  of  this  kind 

\J*^  — — --  ~  —  ••"  ~~~^ 

o v  has^  taken  place.     His  interests  and  pleasures  have  re- 
Svjjjmained  "  fixatedjl  at  infantile  st§ges.     They  have  not 
been  outgrown,  tnatTIsTTmdergone  the  normal  develop- 
mental transference. 

There  is,  indeed,  no  great  abnormality  about  the  early 
childhood  trends  of  this  patient.  In  children,  the  ex- 
cretory functions  are  an  important  source  of  organic 
pleasure,  which  is  by  no  means  always  lost  in  later  life. 
Next  to  the  taking  of  food  it  is  their  most  important  or- 
ganic satisfaction.  Soon  they  meet  the  tabu  with  which 
their  elders  surround  the  functions.  This  reinforces  the 
children's  natural  concern  with  them,  so  that  the  normal 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EMOTION         139 

interest  of  children  in  the  excretory  functions  is  no  small 
one.  While  among  adults  obscene  talk  usually  deals 
with  sexual  functions,  among  children  it  deals  rather  with 
excretory  functions.  Orgies  of  excrementation  are  de- 
scribed  in  story  and  rhyme.  They  have  a  never  failing 
resource  in  the  sports  and  variations  of  the  function 
which  their  ingenuity  devises. 

The  more  mature  the  mental  development,  the  more 
subdued  these  interests  become,  except  in  isolated  cases. 
They  are  prominent  in  the  obscene  talk  of  uncultivated 
adults,  as  they  are  among  children,  but  on  higher  intel- 
lectual levels  they  are  replaced  more  and  more  by  sexual 
topics.  In_conduct,  the  .shifting  of  interests,  from  -the 
excretory  tqjhe  sexual  is  distinctly  marked.  The  pleas- 
ures in  the  excretory  functions  dwindle  or  become  aver- 
sions, and  erotic  reactions  become  a  paramount  source  of 
organic  satisfactions. 

It  is  not  a  new  concept  to  speak  of  this  as  a  trans- 
ference, pi  interest  from  excretory  to  erotic  functions.10 
If  we  mean  simply  that  what  was  formerly  an  excretory 
interest  has  now  reinforced  an  erotic  one,  it  needs  no 
further  elaboration.  More  is  to  be  said,  however,  of  the 
process  by  which  this  takes  place.  In  the  cases  of  affec- 
tive transfer  hitherto  discussed,  we  were  concerned  espe- 
ciallv  with  unpleasant  affects.  We  found  a  tendency  to 
load  an  indifferent  situation  with  an  affect,  while  the 
original  one  faded  from  awareness.  This  had  the  air 
of  a  "  defense  reaction,"  to  keep  the  unpleasant  idea  from 
entering  awareness,  or  at  least  to  keep  it  from  entering 
there.. as  unpleasant.  One  can  at  least  understand  this 
as  an  effort  of  the  mind  to  free  itself  from  unpleasant 

10  Cf.  Pfister,  "  Umschaltung "  or  "  Transposition,"  d.  pso.  Met., 
181. 


140  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

feeling,  just  as  an  unpleasant  physical  object,  like  a  fly,  is 
brushed  away.  Thisjlefense  mechanism  .cannot  operate 
with  the  trans ferjpf  _pleasant  affects.  There  is  no  analo- 
gous motive  for  repressing  ideas  that  give  pleasure. 

There  has,  indeed,  been  a  tendency  to  regard  the 
adult  loss  of  the  infantile  excretory  interests  as  a  repres- 
sion from  the  unpleasant;  but  this  seems  a  mistake. 
Though  there  is  a  conventional  tabu  about  them,  the  con- 
versation of  intimates  indicates  that  they  are  seldom  re- 
garded with  less  than  indifference,  and  that  distinct,  if 
vestigial,  pleasures  often  remain  in  them.  The  repres- 
sion that  exists  about  them  is  not  "  unconscious "  or 
even  personal ;  itjs  superficial,  a  social  one.  Sumner  re- 
lates the  desire  of  privacy  for  such  purposes  to  an  entirely 
foreign  trend  of  sympathetic  magic.  No  enemy  must  be 
given  a  chance  to  get  possession  of  something  so  inti- 
mately connected  with  the  person,  or  through  it  the  lat- 
ter  might  be  done  a  mischief.  (Cf.  pp.  94-95.) 

By  rejecting  the  view  that  these  trends  are  repressed 
owing  to  unpleasantness,  one  avoids  the  complication  that 
the  new  interests  of  eroticism  are  not  unpleasant,  but 
pleasant.  In  fact,  all  the  diffuse  organic  satisfactions  of 
childhood  are  now  centered  about  this  greatest  satisfac- 
tion. Pleasant  affect  is  siphoned  from  the  excretory 
trends,  and  they  are  left  but  slightly  pleasant,  indifferent, 
or  somewhat  unpleasant.  How  pleasant  they  will  be 
left  depends  simply  on  how  complete  the  affective  siphon- 
ing has  been.  If  all  the  pleasure  originally  attaching 

|  to  excretory  functions  has  made  the  normal  shifting  to 
the  erotic,  the  excretory  functions  will  be  unpleasant,  be- 

1  cause  all  things  have  some  degree  of  both  pleasant  and 

;  unpleasant  qualities. 

The  comparative  adult  indifference  to  these  infantile 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EMOTION         141 

satisfactions  does  not  come  therefore  through  repression 
from  unpleasantness.     It_  comes  because  their  pleasant-  ^  v 
ness  is  siphoned  over  to  new  functions,  which  it  is  more, 
important  should  be  pleasant _f or^the _organism.  ji 

This  transference  of  interest  from  the  excretory  to 
the  erotic  sphere  is  the  most  complete  and  pervasive 
transference  that  takes  place.  If  it  does  not  take  place 
completely  enough,  we  have  infantile  fixations  such  as 
are  seen  in  Sadger's  case.  If  it  develops  in  wrong  di- 
rections, if  the  interest  is_Jrjn^fejrLeiLtci_wron^  objects. 
perversions  like  homosexuality  and  fetishism  occur.  In 
any  case,  the  original  trend  does  not  take  orTits  unpleas- 
ant  character  until  the  pleasant  affect  is  well  established 
in  its  new  attachment.  Deer's  flesh  is  not  disdained  by 
the  man-eating  tiger  until  he  has  tasted  a  man. 

The  same  must  be  said  of  the  minor  trends  which  are 
thought  to  derive  something  from  the  infantile  excre- 
mental  interests.  It  is  possible,  as  Sadger  says,  that  a 
fountain  originates  as  an  artistic  symbol  of  the  stream 
of  urine.  He  mentions  artistic  creations  in  which  the 
identification  is  altogether  plain.  But  this  association  j 
hardly  takes  place  because  of  unpleasantness  in  the  excre- 
tory function;  rather  because  of  pleasantness.  It  is  the 
pleasantness  of  these  things  to  us  that  makes  primitive 
or  cultured  men  see  them  where  they  do  not  otherwise 
exist.  In  so  far  as  the  symbolism  of  music,  sculpture 
and  the  like  really  has  this  origin,  it  is  not  because  people 
wanted  to  get  rid  of  the  underlying  idea,  any  more  than 
one  speaks  of  bone  or  plunk  from  a  wish  to  get  rid  of 
the  underlying  idea  of  dollar.  In  a  previous  chapter  we  I 
surely  saw  that  pleasant  affects  have  an  equal  rule  with 
unpleasant  ones  in  the  formation  of  symbols ;  and  it  is  | 
the  former  which  are  at  work  here. 


142  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

But  now  we  meet  the  process  of  symbolism  in  another 
phase.  In  Chapter  III  we  studied  symbols  as  the  con- 
veyers, or  ajtj_east_as  thejexpressions,  of  objects  or  ideas 

53  of  objects.  In  language  and  in  magic, —  two  mainTcli- 
visions  of  symbolism  considered  —  the  word  lion  takes 
the  place  of  the  animal,  a  wax  image  takes  the  place  of 
one's  enemy.  Something  easy  to  control Js__rn.ade  equiva- 
lent to  something  not  so  easy  to  control,  because  of  real 
t ,  r^y*  or_  fanciecl  ujelinhess_jS^jioing.  This  is  rational  syrn- 
balism.  But  now  we  are  saying,  in  effect,  that  Miss  X 
symbolizes  my  unadmired  boy  acquaintance,  in  that  the 
affect _she  arouses  in  me  is  derived  from  him.  She  is 
not  identified  with  him  in  any  way  rationally,  cognitively ; 
it  is  only  affectively  that  she_is.  identified  with  him.  The 
fact  tnat  she  looks  like  him  .does  not  even  come  at  once 
tCLawargness.  The  feeling  that  she_arouses_is  the  domi- 
nant, for  a  while  the  "only  feature  of  the  association  be- 
tween the  two.  In  this  way_we  shall  now  consider  a 
,  thing  as  symbolic  oTjsomething'  else,  when  it  derives^  its 

A.)  loaded  affect  —  pleasant  or  unpleasant^ —  from  that  some- 

j|  thing  else,  although  it  may  not_be  identified^  wjth  it  in  any 

Cv*'    | jl  other  ^significant  way.     This  we  shall  call  affective  sym- 

~botism- 

There  are  rational  and  affective  elements  in  all  sym- 
bolism. Words  of  language  describe  the  objective  world 
to  us  well  enough,  but  they  do  not  carry  at  all  the  affect 
of  the  actual  experiences  they  connote.  Their  symbolism 
is  dominantly  rational,  and  but  slightly  affective.  The 
water  can  of  page  138  has  indeed  a  rational  association 
with  the  urinary  interests;  but  in  the  boy  their  more 
prominent  common  feature  is  the  affective,  pleasurable 
one.  Intej^cdcms_dojnot  symliQJi?.e.Jdeas  or  objects  di- 
rectly,  but  strictly  feelings.  The  symbolism  of  the  wed- 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EMOTION         143 

ding  ring  is  primarily  affective.  that_pfjcnrfi;  few  people 
think  of  the  ring  as  a  rational  symbolism,  indicating 
without  end  oj  eternity. 

The  bell-towers  of  Prince's  case  are  the  aptest  of  af- 
fective symbols,  since  they  serve  solely  as  carriers  of 
affect,  and  have  but  irrelevant  rational  connection  with 
the  underlying  cause  of  that  affect.     The  brown  colors 
of  Tait's  case  are  another  affective  symbol,  loaded  with 
affect  from  an  original  experience  that  is  itself  forgotten.  ^  * 
As  a  symbol  must  not  be  greater  than  the  thing  it  syrji- 
bolizes,  we  must  not  apply  the  term  affective  symbolism 
to_all  cases  of  affective  transference.     It  would  be  no 
more  absurd  to  make  the  oak  a  symbol  of  the  acorn,  than 
to  speak  of  love  as  an  affective  symbol  of  infantile  auto- 
erotism.     The  term  affective  symbolism  applies  to  those  •> 
cases  in  which  the  association  develops  as  a  carrier  of 
the  affect  attached  to  the  original  experience,  and  serves  jj 
no  other  purpose. 

The  common  factor  in  the  material Jiypted^js  that  jm 
experience  properly  indifferent  is  loadeiTwith  a2ecTffoTTi_ 
another  experience  which  was  properly  rich  _in_  aflecf. 
In  order  that  the  secondary  experience  may  be  loaded 
with  affect  from  the  primary  one,  some  association  be- 
tween the  two  is  necessary.     Direct  temporal  contiguity         J} 
is  the  simplest  kind  of  such  association.     It  has  not 
been  prominent  in  the  examples  given.     Scott  heard  the 
songs  and  the  stories  simultaneously.     Pfister  cites  the 
case  of  a  boy  who,  having  just  learned  to  masturbate, 
does  so  during  a  school  session  at  a  time  when  a  boy 
next  him  is  being  whipped.     The  affect  attaching  to  the 
masturbation  is  radiated  over  to  the  whipping;  so  that 
after  this  experience,  his  masturbation  is  preceded  by  a   x '  * 
stereotyped  fancy  of  a  boy,  or  occasionally  his  sister, 


144  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

being  whipped.  The  whipping  became  obsessively  asso- 
ciated with  the  masturbation  through  temporal  contigu- 
ity.11 

We  have  seen  more  of  association  by  similarity. 
Prince's  case,  from  disliking  one  kind  of  bell-tower,  dis- 
likes other  kinds.  Tait's  case,  from  disliking  one  par- 
ticular brown,  dislikes  other  browns.  The  writer,  dis- 
liking the  memory  of  a  certain  boy,  dislikes  a  young 
woman  who  looks  like  him.  This  opens  the  question  of 
how  much  similarity,  or  what  kind  of  association,  is 

X  found  between  the  primary  and  the  secondary  experience, 

y  when  the  latter  bears  a  transferred  affect,  or  serves  as  an 

<  affective  symbol  of  the  former. 

How  much  must  a  building  suggest  a  bell-tower  for 
Prince's  case  to  fear  it  ?  How  much  brown  may  there  be 
in  a  color-mixture  without  Tait's  case  feeling  dislike 
toward  it?  Would  they  dislike  people  whose  names 
were  Bell,  Tower,  or  Brown?  Would  I  have  disliked 
Miss  X  if  only  her  voice  and  not  her  face  had  resembled 
the  boy's?  When  the  "  conversion  "  of  an  affective  ex- 
perience into  a  hysterical  symptom  (e.  g.,  a  peculiar 
body-movement)  takes  place,  what  are  the  grounds  of 
association,  in  contiguity  or  similarity,  upon  which  such 
conversion  may  be  based?  How  close  a  rational  asso- 

*  ciation  is  necessary  for  affective  symbolism? 

Apparently  the  connection  may  be  quite  remote  or 
even  figurative.  TPrTster  cites  some  cases  that  show 
this.  A  well  educated  woman,  married  for  some  months, 
ardently  desires  children,  but  the  husband  is  impotent. 
The  unity  of  the  household  is  threatened.  She  has  hys- 
terical pains  in  the  abdomen,  and  also  an  obsessive  idea 

11  This  contiguity  is  representative  of  an  important  source  of 
fetishism. 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EMOTION 

of  burglars  (Einbrecher,  "  breakers-in  " )  in  the  garden. 
Now  this  possibility  is  present  to  any  householder  so 
fortunate  as  to  have  a  garden,  but  it  does  not  lead  to  a 
morbid  fear.  This  comes  in  the  case  of  a  woman  who  / 
wishes  children  but  cannot  have  them  because  her  hus- 
band is  impotent.  The  idea  of  burglars  receives  this 
load  of  affect  from  the  disturbed  situation  in  which  the 
woman  finds  herself.  It  comes  up  insistently  as  an  af- 
fective symbol  of  the  sexual  difficulty.  The  analogies 
of  sexual  intercourse  to  breaking  in  through  a  garden 
are  sufficient  to  establish  it.  The  phobia  disappeared  on 
the  understanding  of  this  relationship,  and  the  fortunate 
cure  of  the  husband's  impotence.  We  cannot  here  go 
deeply  into  the  circumstance  that  the  idea  of  burglars 
carries  fear  when  the  thing  back  of  it  is  a  wish.  Itjg 
paj^  ojf  the  same  process  by  which  the  conventional  old 
maid  worries  about  the  man  under  her  be_d.  Sexual 
feelings  as  yet  unrealized  are  often  associated  with  a 
large  element  of  .fear,  which  may  even  interfere  seri-j 
ously  with  the  establishment  of  sexual  relationships.  In 
this  particular  case,  the  idea  of  burglary  is  itself  one  to 
provoke  some  fear-reaction,  the  more  when  obsessively 
present. 

In  another  case,  a  teacher  was  sensible  of  a  sudden  and 
unaccountable  attraction  for  one  of  his  girl-pupils  who 
had  previously  not  especially  affected  him.  It  appears 
that  he  is  temporarily  in  love  with  a  young  woman  who  is 
descended  from  a  famous  poet,  though  not  bearing  his 
name.  The  surname  of  the  pupil  is  the  same  as  the 
poet's,  and  her  first  name  is  the  same  as  that  of  the 
young  woman.  As  his  ardor  for  the  latter  cools,  the 
pupil  again  becomes  indifferent.  By  virtue  of  the  re- 
lated names,  the  affect  for  the  young  woman  radiated 
11 


146  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

to  the  pupil.  Quite  unbeknown  to  the  teacher,  the  pupil 
was  thus  an  affective  symbol  for  the  young  woman;  just 
as,  unbeknown  to  Prince's  patient,  bell-towers  were  af- 
fective symbols  for  ideas  connected  with  the  mother's 
illness. 

A  multiple  succession  of  affective  symbols  is  shown 
in  the  case  of  a  twelve-year-old  girl  characterized  by  an 
excessive  dislike  for  the  ordinary  housework  she  is  called 
upon  to  perform.  She  does  not  mind  setting  the  table, 
making  beds,  watering  flowers,  or  running  errands,  so 
much  as  dusting,  cleaning  the  bird  cage,  and  the  like;  i.e., 
especially  things  that  have  to  do  with  hous&clegmng. 
The  most  distasteful  thing  for  her  is  to  "  cut  off  the 
stems  of  the  flowers  because  their  sap-tubes  are  plugged." 
In  the  midst  of  embarrassment  ensuing  upon  this  con- 
fession, the  girl  appreciates  an  analogy  between  these 
dislikes  and  her  chronic  constipation  from  the  earliest 
childhood,  resisting  all  medical  treatment.  Hereupon 
the  constipation  disappears,  and  she  becomes  normally 
interested  in  her  housework.  The  house-cleaning  served, 
in  its  unpleasantness,  as  the  affective  symbol  of  its  bodily 
correlate.  As  in  other  cases  quoted,  there  was  no  aware- 

**"''" 

ofjthe  association  until  special  methods  of  examina- 

brought  it  to  awareness. 

The  same  girl  had  a  habit  of  peeling  skin  from  her 
fingers.  This  is  quite  frequently  regarded  as  a  vestigial 
autoerotic  reaction.  The  girl  had  actually  masturbated 
at  eight  years,  and  the  finger-peeling  is  apparently  a  re- 
action to  its  discontinuance.  She  was  broken  of  the 
finger-peeling  by  a  physician,  only  to  develop  at  once  a 
marked  avidity  in  eating  raw  carrots.  On  arriving  spon- 
taneously at  the  analogy  between  this  and  her  previous 
practices,  the  hunger  for  carrots  ceased.  Shortly  after- 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EMOTION         147 

ward  appears  an  inordinate  desire  to  learn  the  violin. 
"  Geige  spielen "  is  actually  a  colloquial  equivalent  for 
masturbation.  As  the  violin  was  purchased,  she  was 
noted  again  to  be  peeling  her  fingers,  but  this  ceased  with 
the  possession  of  the  violin.  In  these  instances  the  crude 
autoerotic  affect  represented  in  the  earlier  masturbation 
is  simply  carried  over  into  less  harmful  or  possibly  good 
reactions.  The  violin  would  be  here  what  the  water  can 
is  to  Sadger's  case  (p.  138). 

A  close  parallel  to  the  burglar  phobia  presented  above 
is  shown  by  a  phobia  in  a  girl  of  14^2  years,  which 
breaks  out  on  the  stopping  of  masturbation.  It  will  be 
understood  that  this  blocking  the  outlet  of  erotic  tensions 
creates  for  her  somewhat  the  same  situation  that  the  im- 
potent husband  causes  in  the  other  case.  The  phobia  is 
of  insects;  that  they  will  climb  up  her  back;  have  their 
delicate  wings  injured.  There  was  also  a  fancy  of  de- 
composing in  a  grave  with  insects  crawling  about  her. 
It  appears  that  she  had  been  taught  erotic  practices  by  a 
servant  girl  and  her  lover;  they  had  told  her  it  would 
feel  "  as  though  insects  were  crawling  up  her  body." 
They  had  also  explained  to  her  the  significance  of  the 
hymen.  (Delicate  wings;  cf.  Hymenoptera.}  As  be- 
fore, the  affective  symbol  of  the  blocked  trend  carries  a 
morbid  fear. 

It  has  been  remarked  by  psychiatrists  that  self -accusa- 
tory ideas,  of  whatever  nature,  very  ^frequently  have 
masturbatory  practices  as  a. basis.  The  individual  does 
not  accuse  himself  of  the  masturbation,  but  of  something 
else.  Pfister  brings  a  very  clear  illustration  of  this  in 
the  case  of  a  boy  who  had  for  six  years  stolen  from  his 
mother  without  compunction.  When  he  began  to  mas- 
turbate, this  did  not  trouble  him,  but  he  awoke  to  great 


148  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

penitence  for  his  dishonesty.  Pfister  observes  that  this 
transference  of  self -accusation  usually  appears  when 
*  '  masturbation  has  been  stopped  in  consequence  of  warning 
threats.  (Cf.  above.) 

Here  the  bond  of  similarity  that  establishes  the  affec- 
tive symbolism  is  again  vague ;  anything  that  will  serve  as 
a  carrier  for  self -accusatory  feelings  will  serve  as  the 
affective  symbol. 

Affective  symbolism  is  the  key  to  the  interpretation  of 
the  affective  displacements  of  dreams.  As  described  on 
page  1 20,  the  dreamer  goes  into  paroxysms  of  horror  on 
reading  the  details  of  some  century-old  murders.  The 
probable  supposition  is,  that  what  the  dreamer  is  looking 
at  is  really  something  other  than  an  account  of  sins  in 
..  bygone  ages.  The^dreamer_  is  really  facing  some  fact  of 
,f  his.own_e^isj:ejicej»vhich_is  qfjremendous L  affect ful  value. 
Only,  by  the  fundamental  tendency  of  the  dream  to 
symbolize,  it  is  presented  in  this  distorted  form.  What 
this  underlying  affectful  idea  is  can  seldom,  if  ever,  be 
told  directly.  Prince's  case  could  not  tell  what  was  the 
idea  underlying  her  waking  phobia  of  bell-towers. 
Careful  records  of  ideas  associated  with  the  symbol  may 
enable  one  who  is  practiced  in  such  studies  to  select  the 
idea  which  has  loaded  the  dream-episode  with  its  affect. 
y  '\/  This  is  actually  what  the  psychoanalytic  method  attempts 
to  do. 

In  the  "  Lusitania-cap  "  dream  again,  it  is  evident  that 
the  cap  without  which  the  dreamer  may  not  leave  the 
sinking  ship  is  no  ordinary  piece  of  head  covering,  but 
something  very  important  for  the  dreamer's  existence. 
He  will  not  trust  himself  to  the  mercy  of  the  waves 
without  it.  To  one  knowing  the  general  circumstances  of 
the  dreamer  at  the  time,  the  probable  symbolisms  are  a 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EMOTION 

good  deal  clearer  than  in  the  previous  case.  They  may 
be  left  to  the  reader's  ingenuity.  We  shall  recur  to  some 
other  points  in  this  dream  under  the  head  of  Dissoci- 
ation. 

When,  in  the  dream,  properly  indifferent  things  ap- 
pear of  great  moment  to  us,  the_best  explanation  is  that 
they  are  representing  somethinj^£eally_of_great  moment_  ./ 
to  Tis.  This  carrying  of  their  affect  is  the  most  striking 
way  in  which  the  dream-ideas  symbolize  the  underlying 
ones.  The  cap  would  thus  be  the  affective  ^ynibol^oj. 
something  very  essential. 

The  term  affective  symbolism  is  thus  applied  to  ajnen-»\ ' 
jl  tal  process  which  carries  a  special  affect  derived  from  \\ 
//    some  other  mental  process.     The  examples  quoted  have  v 
mostly  been  of  a  kind  in  which  one  could  trace  a  proc- 
ess which  had  carried  the  affect  previous  to  the  symbol 
in  question.     What  the  violin  carried  last,  had  previously 
been  carried  by  eating  carrots,  peeling  fingers  and  mas- 
turbation.    It  seems  quite  right  to  consider  that  anything 
to  which  pronounced  affect  attaches  in  later  life  of  the 
i  individual  has  derived  this  affect  from  something  else 
\vhich  previously  held  it.     The  sum  of  affectivity  con- 
tinues; the  mental  process  which  carries  it  is  subject  to 
much  alteration? 

~~Tt  wilFbe  a  matter  of  opinion  how  far  one  should  ap- 
ply the  term  affective  symbolism  to  the  manifold  hob- 
bies, fads  and  interests  that  people  cultivate,  often  far 
beyond  the  bounds  of  usefulness.  Affective  transfer- 
ence, radiation,  fusion,  siphoning,  absorption,  exten- 
sion,12 they  certainly  are.  These  come  especially,  if  a 
fundamental  trend  or  interest  is  prevented  from  trans- 
ferring itself  along  the  usual  lines  of  its  development. 

"McDougall,  "Social  Psychology"   (1914),  74. 


150  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

Who  does  not  realize  that  the  domestic  pets  which  lonely 
people  keep  carry  the  affect  that  normally  belongs  to 
lovers  or  children?  Only  one  should  insist  on  the  es- 
sentially affective  nature  of  such  symbolisms.  The  old 
xjnaid  lavishes  affection  on  her  parrot,  and  we  may  call 
it  the  affective  symbol  of  a  child.13  But  the  identifica- 
tion stops  here ;  she  does  not  rock  it  in  a  cradle  or  bottle- 
/feed it,  though  she  might  rear  a  tombstone  above  its 


The  great  problem  of  affective  transference  is:  from 
what  do  the  loaded  mental  processes  derive  their  affect, 
and  what  is  the  relation  between  the  original  carriers  of 
affect  and  the  subsequent  ones?     We  saw,  for  example, 
that  some  share  of  the  erotic  affect  in  later  life  is  ab- 
sorbed from  infantile  enjoyments  of  metabolic  functions. 
The  pursuits  most  enjoyed  in  later  life  are  those  which 
have  best  absorbed  pleasurable  affect  from  things  enjoyed 
earlier  in  life.     Things  which  the  individual  thus  enjoys 
will  have  more  of  the  individual's  attention  and  energy 
than  things  which  are  indifferent.     It  is  thus  significant 
for  the  individual's  adaptation  to  life,  to  what  activities 
the  pleasant  affects  attaching  to  childish  sources  of  en- 
,  joyment  are  later  transferred.     If  they  are  transferred 
I  to  useful  activities,  the  result  will  be  beneficial  to  the 
!  individual  and  those  around  him.     This  is  the  process 
that  Freud  and  his  followers  call  sublimation.     If  the 
'  pleasurable  affects  are  not  sufficiently  transferred,  or  are 
1  transferred  to  useless  or  harmful  activities,  the  resulting 
failure  of  sublimation  is  summed  up  in  such  terms  as 
introversion  (p.  41),  or  more  broadly,  regression.14 

18  Or  a  lover ;  cf.  the  charming-  monologue  of  Beatrice  Herf ord, 
"  The  Professional  Boarder." 

14  Cf.  Wells,  "  Mental  Regression :  Its  Conception  and  Types," 
Psychiat.  Bui.  (Oct.,  1916),  445-492. 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EMOTION          151 

A  great  part  of  human  energy  is  spent  to  serve  no  pur- 
pose beyond  immediate  sensory  or  mental  pleasure  to  the 
individual.  It  is  like  the  lavish  expenditure  of  money 
for  unproductive  luxuries,  by  way  of  "  putting  it  into 
circulation."  The  political  economist  points  out  that 
the  money  is  as  truly  put  into  circulation  if  spent  in  more 
useful  ways.  The  similar  policy  of  mental  economy  is 
thus  wasteful,  though  not  necessarily  harmful. 

Whatever  directs  the  transfer  of  affect  and  interest  f 
from  trend  to  trend  of  conduct  is  what  makes  the  most  ' 
striking  difference  between  the  superior  and  the  inferior 
personality.  It  makes  the  difference  between  the  lover 
of  caged  birds  and  the  builder  of  a  great  social  serv- 
ice. It  is  the  process  by  which  one  workman  spends  his 
dinner  hour  in  teaching  his  dog  a  new  trick,  while  his 
comrade  invents  a  new  carpenter's  tool  whose  patent  he 
sells  for  a  fortune.  It  determines  whether  a  boy  who 
chases  fireflies  will  find  his  life  work  in  attending  to 
street  lamps,  or  in  engineering  the  illumination  of  great 
cities. 

Viewed  genetically,  the  affective  life  of  man  is  a  con- 
ti.nual  series  of  affective  transferences.     Certain  things  ' 
are  normally  of  interest  in  childhood.     Their  affects  are  j 
transferred  to  the  other  normal  interests  of  adult  life.  ; 
When  an  abnormal,  unusual  sort  of  affective  transference  i 
has  taken  place,   it  produces  "  affective  displacement." 
Displaced  affective  reactions  may  also  come  about   in 
other  ways   (affective  contrast  and  underlying  moods). 
The^hief  generalization  to  \vhich  this  chapter  directs  us 
is_the.  persistence  of  affectivity  independently  of  the  idea 
tqjyhich  it  attaches.      Objckt  vergcht,  AJfekt  besteM. 

This  is  the  meaning  of  the  "  continuity  of  emotion  " — 
the  conservation  of  affectivity.  As  water  siphons  from 


152  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

one  vessel  to  another,  so  does  the  Gefiihlsflut  of  affect 
and  interest  siphon  from  one  pursuit  to  another  —  from 
the  child's  hunt  for  the  golden  butterfly  to  the  man's 
quest  for  the  golden  fleece.  Successful  living  is  pretty 
much  a  function  _of  the _paths_.  which  this  trans  fejrejoce 
takes,  and  the  effectiveness  with  \vhich  it  is  accomplished. 
. ,  And,  as  men  differ  greatly  in  these  paths  of  transference, 
;  they  differ  again  in  the  readiness  with  which  affects 
.'  j  transfer  from  any  one  pursuit  to  another.  Some  persons 
develop  liking  and  interest  for  almost  anything  which 
circumstance  puts  in  their  way.  Others  have  deeper  and 
more  stable  interests  which  do  not  so  readily  transfer. 
The  Don  Juan  and  the  "_one  girl  man"  are  .their  erotic 
prototypes.  The  enjoyments  of  the  former  have  supe- 
rior adaptability,  those  of  the  latter  superior  persistence. 
Major  differences  of  character  and  temperament  hinge 
upon  these  factors.  The  contents  of  personal  .conscious- 
ness have  never  begun  to  account  for  them.  This  fact 
j|  invites  their  classification  as  inherent  and  constitutional 
;|  traits.  But  psychogenic  influences  may  be  outside  the 
domain  of  personal  consciousness.  Ideas  of  much  im- 
port to  the  individual,  like  the  phobias  of  bell-towers  and 
of  insects,  lay  inaccessible  to  consciousness ;  yet  they  were 
not  constitutional  but  psychogenic.  The  significance  of  / 
acquired  but  unconscious  influences  in  the  development  of  li 
personality  is  unquestionable.  We  seek  their  better  ac- 
quaintance in  the  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  V 

TYPES   OF   DISSOCIATION 

As  these  lines  are  written,  certain  mental  processes  go 
on  in  the  writer's  mind,  of  which  this  writing  is  an  ex- 
pression.    Meanwhile,   other  processes  go  on  in  him, 
which  are  independent  of  this  writing.     Breathing  and 
heart-action  continue  uninterruptedly,  and  are  but  slightly 
affected.     Like   the   writing,    they   are   conditioned   by 
nervous  activity.     Breathing  depends  upon  a  lower  nerv- 
ous center,  and  heart-rate  is  similarly  regulated.     Breath- 
ing and  heart-rate  on  the  one  hand,  the  composition  of 
these  lines  on  the  other,  have  not  especially  modified  one 
another.     Such  independence,   and  lack  of  connection, .  n  ^ 
when  it  occurs  between  mental  processes,  is  called,  djssv-  < 
datipn^     When  processes  thus  go  onjvjthjrelatiyejnfo-j 
pendence,  they  are  said  to  be  dissociated^  one  from  the » 
other.     One  mental  function  is  dissociated  from  another, 
to  the  extent  that  it  goes  on  independently  of  the  other. 
Of  course  this  independence  is  never  absolute;  if  the 
heart  stopped  so  would  the  writing.     The  dissociation 
between  mental  processes  is  always  a  matter  of  degree. 

As  the  writing  proceeds,  my  secretary  brings  me  some 
letters  to  sign.  While  the  letters  are  being  examined 
and  signed,  the  work  of  composition  ceases.  It  is  im- 

»CY.  Hart,  "Psychology  of  Insanity,"  42:  "This  division  of  the 
mind  into  independent  fragments,  which  are  not  coordinated  together 
to  attain  some  common  end,  is  termed  'Dissociation  of  Conscious- 
ness.'"_  This  broad  use  of  the  term  is  the  best  one  for  us.  Cf.  also 
Hart's  illustrations. 

153 


154  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

possible  for  me  to  attend  at  once  to  my  writing  and  to 
the  letters.  My  eyes,  memories  and  arm-movements  can- 
not serve  both  these  purposes  at  once.  The  writing  and 
the  letters  employ  organic  functions  which  are  not  inde- 
pendent. I  cannot  dissociate  these  functions  to  perform 
rt  the  different  tasks  at  once.  Such  functions  are  rather 

VIJ 

integrated  —  the  opposite  of  dissociated..     In  so  far  as 
the  organic  functions  proceed  independently  of  one  an- 

i    other,  they  are  dissociated.     In  so  far  as  they  modify  one 
another,  they  are  integrated. 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  of  the  several  bodily  and  mental 
functions,  many  are  closely  integrated.  As  a  rule,  there 
is  a  close  relation  between  respiration-rate  and  heart- 
rate.  If  one  should  go  up  while  the  other  went  down, 
they  would  be  dissociated.  The  understanding  of  a  joke 
is  integrated  with  the  process  of  laughter.  In  the  same 
sense,  the  knowledge  that  two  and  two  make  four  is  inte- 
grated with  the  balancing  of  one's  bank  account.  My 
conduct  of  to-day  is  integrated  with  a  conversation  I  had 
yesterday,  if  I  keep  a  certain  lunch  appointment.  If  I 
forget  the  appointment,  my  mental  processes  are  disso- 
ciated with  those  of  yesterday,  where  they  should  have 
been  integrated.  In  one  who  is  by  nature  a  good  father 

/and  an  honest  politician,  public  and  private  morals  are 
integrated.     In  a  good  father  and  corrupt  politician  they 
•  are  dissociated. 

It  makes  for  the  well-being  of  the  organism  that  some 
functions  should  be  closely  integrated,  and  others  more 
or  less  dissociated.  That  dissociation  is  certainly  a  good 
trait  which  enables  one  to  do  mental  work  while  digest- 
ing his  dinner,  or  to  pick  one's  way  over  a  rough  moun- 
tain trail  while  carrying  on  a  pleasant  conversation  with 
companions.  Much  dissociation  comes  by  practice;  in 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  155 

the  latter  instance,  the  novice  would  have  to  pay  attention 
to  his  footing.  An  essential  part  of  all  training  is  that  it 
enables  one  to  carry  on  simultaneously  processes  which 
at  first  take  undivided  attention.  Some  people  may  train 
themselves  to  unusual  dissociations  of  their  mental  proc- 
esses, like  multiplying  a  group  of  figures  and  repeating 
verses  at  once,  in  about  the  same  time  as  is  required  for 
either  alone.2 

With  these  examples  for  the  meaning  of  integration 
and  dissociation,  let  us  briefly  enumerate  what  is  nor- 
mally integrated  in  the  personality,  and  what  is  dissoci- 
ated.    Most  reflex,  or  so-called  "infra-cerebral"  proc-   r" 
esses,  like  breathing,  heart-rate,  and  metabolic  functions,  ' 
we  are  not  normally  aware  of,  nor  do  we  voluntarily  *  ^£' 
control  them.     They  are  dissociated  from  awareness  and     *'  £ 
from  volition.     Breathing  and  walking  we  can  readily  ! 
become  aware  of  and  voluntarily  modify,  but  we  need  \ 
not.     In  digestion  and  other  metabolic  processes,  the  dis- 
sociation from  awareness  is  practically  complete. 

But  though  many  such  functions  are  independent  of 
awareness,  there  is  a  sense  in  which  they  are  all  inte- 
grated with  it  and  with  one  another.  Ijheirjtendency 
isjo  serve  the  personality.  The  digestion  of  food  and 
the  performance  of  ordinary  work  are  dissociated  so  far 
as  independence  is  concerned.  Yet  they  are  both  bene- 
ficial to  the  organism  in  their  several  ways.  Though 
digestion  is  not  integrated  with  awareness,  it  is  integrated 
withjthe  tendency^ Joj5urvival._  Now  if  this  integration 
should  break  down,  and  the  digestive  organs  should  re- 
fuse to  perform  their  work,  there  would  be  a  dissocia- 
tion which  is  harmful  to  the  organism.  Some  dissocia- 
tions are  useful,  others  wasteful.  A  great  number  of 

2  James,  "  Principles,"  I,  408. 


156  MENTAt  ADJUSTMENTS 

normal  dissociations  are  developed  through  selection  and 
\  training^  for  their  value  to  the  organism.     Dissociations 
Harmful  to  the  organism  are  pathological.     Pathological 
.,     Dissociations  come  about  through  special  applications  of 
y>'.  y  the  principles  brought  forward  in  Chapter  II  (pp.  44-45). 
Every  one  who  is  to  speak  of  dissociated  mental  func- 
tions must  posit  something  from  which  the  dissociation 
takes  place.     What  is  the  dissociated  function  dissociated 
W  from  ?    A  simple  kind  of  dissociation  occurs  in  hysteria, 
\r,  \  where  the  patient  does  not  feel  a  touch  upon  some  par- 
;  ticular  portion  of  the  body.     That  portion  is  said  to  be 
n^  i  anesthetic.     We  call  it  so  because  "  he,"  the  patient,  does 
not  feel  it.     Sen^iwi_js_£resenl*.  because  there  is  some 
involuntary  reaction  to  the  touch,  but  "he"  does  not 
feel  it ;  it  is  dissociated  from  "  him,"  not  integrated  with 
"  him."     The  sum  jofjLll_memories_that  this  woj;c["  him  " 
implies  in  this j:.ase,  is_the.  mfintaLsystem  from .  whidj.dis- 
.\sociation,  as  we  shaJLhere  discuss_it,  takes _place.     A  con- 

A  *  «  ** 

y>*    vement  name  for  this  system  is,  the  main \  JiersoiinJiQ. 
•,j  In  the  writings  of  Janet  and  Prince,  one  finds^ersonal 
/&/T  consc^ou^ess'     The  two  are  used  interchangeably ;  either 
^  jj'^form  is  used  that  seems  the  clearer  for  the  purpose  in 
4?      hand. 

This  chapter  describes  the  dissociation  of  mental  proc- 
esses from  the  main  personality,  with  some  other  phe- 
nomena not  strictly  of  this  class,  but  obviously  related  to 
it.  These  dissociations  are  of  several  kinds.  We  have 
quoted  a  possible  example  of  the  first  kind,  in  a  break- 
down of  the  digestive  system.  Here  a  process  is  disso- 
ciated not  only  from  the  personal  consciousness  (as  it  is 
normally),  but  also  from  the  main  tendency  to  survival. 
We  shall  meet  a  few  other  examples.  In  such  cases,  the 
8  Introduced  in  this  sense  by  August  Hoch. 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  157 

distinguishing  feature  is  the  dissociation  of  some  invol- 
untary or  unconscious  function  of  the  organism.  Sec- 
ond, the  ability  to  move  one  side  of  the  body,  or  the  lower 
half  of  the  body,  or  to  make  the  movements  of  speaking, 
may  be  lost.  It  is  like  a  paralysis  of  the  muscles  that 
make  these  movements.  Certain  movements  of  these 
muscles  are  lost  to  the  control  of  the  main  personality. 
They  are  dissociated  from  it.  Third,  a  patient  whose 
retina  is  unaffected  may  be  unable  to  see  objects  outside 
the  direct  line  of  vision.  Though  his  skin  is  healthy,  he 
may  be  unable  to  feel  a  touch  at  some  special  spot. 
When  this  happens,  it  is  a  form  of  sensation,  instead  of 
a  movement,  that  is  dissociated  from  the  main  personal- 
ity. Fourth,  ideas  may  manifest  themselves  in  a  great 
varjfil}L_Ql_HSys*  without  the  main  personality's 


aware_of  the  ideas.  "Prince's  patient  of  the  bell-towers  /gu< 
gave  a  fair  example  of  this,  when  her  hand  wrote  auto- 
matically something  not  in  the  awareness  of  the  then 
dominating  personality.  Fifth,  the  main  personality 
may  lose  control  of  the  organism,  jwhich  is  then  dpmi- 
nate3"5y"  a  system  of  ideas  split  off  from  it.  (Somnam-  "^ 
buHsms,  fugues.  ^multiple  personality.)  Sixth,  the  main 
personality  may  be  aware  of  the  occurrence  of  a  mental 
process,  but  not  recognize  the  existence  of  the  process  as 
a  part  of  the  main  personality.  (Externalization,  pro- 
jtction.)  For  example,  a  patient  complains  that  the 
"  voices  "  hurl  insults  at  him.  Of  course,  the  voices 
come  from  nobody  but  himself;  but  he  does  not  recognize 
the  voices  as  coming  from  himself. 

We  may  take  up  these  different  forms  of  dissociation       (j, 
in  the  order  above.     First  come  those  in  which  an  invol- 
untary and  only  incidentally  conscious  movement  is  dis-J  *^v 
sociated  from  the  integrated  organic  trends,  so  that  it  no 


158  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

longer  serves  the  organism.  Janet  affords  a  group  of 
illustrations.  Perhaps  the  most  delicate  is  the  dissocia- 
tion of  the  crystalline  lens,  which  abolishes  visual  accom- 
modation. The  lens  is  functionally  paralyzed,  and  can- 
not accommodate  for  varying  distances.  It  remains  ad- 
justed for  one  distance  only,  and  objects  must  be  placed 
at  that  distance  to  be  seen  clearly. 

Again  the  dissociation  affects  the  respiratory  movements. 
The  integration  of  the  diaphragm,  glottis,  etc.,  which  is  nec- 
essary for  effective  breathing,  is  disturbed.  Considerable 
effort  may  be  made  to  breathe,  but,  as  it  is  not  well  co- 
ordinated, very  little  air  is  taken  in.  An  interesting  res- 
piratory dissociation  he  quotes  from  Lermoyez,  whose  case 
could  breathe  only  through  the  mouth,  though  the  nose  was 
not  obstructed.  If  the  mouth  was  kept  closed,  no  breathing 
.was  possible  for  her,  and  she  became  blue  in  the  face  for 
\vant  of  air.  The  simple,  necessary  function  of  breathing 
was  dissociated  —  wholly  cut  off  from  serving  its  elemen- 
tary organic  purposes.  Janet  is  of  the  opinion  that  these 
dissociations  of  breathing  do  not  descend  to  the  lowest 

K  nerve-centers  that  control  breathing.  A  patient,  unable  to 
breathe,  may  faint  from  asphyxia.  Then,  when  conscious- 
ness is  abolished,  the  centers  of  the  medulla  resume  their 
function,  and  breathing  recommences.  Life,  which  con- 

.'  sciousness  has  been  powerless  to  maintain,  is  preserved  by 
the  unconscious. 

Dissociations  of  the  alimentary  functions  have  been  men- 
tioned. In  the  above  respect  there  is  a  fateful  differ- 
ence between  respiratory  and  alimentary  dissociations. 
The  taking  of  food  involves  voluntary  movements ;  so  that 
the  dissociation  of  the  voluntary  processes  of  eating,  if 
sufficiently  prolonged,  may  cause  death  from  hunger.  Janet 
thinks  that  sensory  dissociations  of  smell,  taste,  and  touch 
(mucous  membrane  of  the  stomach),  play  some  role  in  dis- 
sociating the  alimentary  functions.  If  the  appropriate 
stimuli  of  appetite  are  not  felt,  the  proper  reflexes  are  not 
aroused.  On  the  other  hand,  the  function  of  alimentation 
is  so  complex  that  it  is  difficult  to  know  just  what  is  disso- 
ciated in  a  general  disturbance  of  it.  Janet  lays  more  stress 
on  a  general  euphoria;  a  failure  to  perceive  the  sensations 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  159 

of  inanition.  The  patients  have  less  sense  of  the  need  to 
eat  It  is  important  to  know  whether  digestion  proceeds 
normally  in  the  case  of  food  administered  through  a  stom- 
ach tube.  If  the  involuntary  processes  of  digestion  are 
still  integrated,  there  should  then  be  no  death  from  starva- 
tion. According  to  Janet,  tube-feedings  are  digested  prac-V  * 
tically  normally.  The  dissociation  of  involuntary  alimen- 
tary functions  is  therefore  doubtful. 

There  is  some  other  evidence  that  vaso-motor  and  trophic 
processes  may  be  disconnected  from  previous  integrations 
with  the  rest  of  the  organism.  Moll,  without  accepting 
them  all,  unreservedly,  cites  a  long  series  of  such  observa- 
tions,* in  which  the  dissociation  is  produced  by  hypnotic 
suggestion.  Bleeding  from  the  nose  and  skin  is  said  to 
have  been  thus  produced.  When  a  subject  was  touched 
with  a  common  object  and  told  the  skin  was  being  burned, 
a  blister  in  the  form  of  the  object  resulted.  Control  of  the 
peristaltic  functions  seems  relatively  easy  to  effect.  James 
recalls  Delboeuf's  observation  that  of  two  symmetrical 
burns  with  the  actual  cautery,  no  blister  appeared  on  the 
side  for  which  anesthesia  was  suggested.0  Pfister  reports  c 
the  case  of  a  young  girl  who  twice  developed  a  swelling  of  7 
the  lip  after  resisting  attempts  at  kissing.6 

The  voluntary  movement  of  limbs  may  be  lost,  so  that  ( 
they  appear  paralyzed.  If  one  side  of  the  body  is  thus  \/ 
dissociated  from  voluntary  control,  the  result  is  a  func- 
tional hemiplegia.  If  the  dissociation  affects  the  lower 
half  of  the  body,  the  result  is  called  a  functional  j>ara- 
plegia.  Various  signs  of  physical  disease  are  absent  in 
such  cases  which  would  be  present  in  organic  paralyses, 
and  thus  they  are  distinguishable.  Janet  makes  a  strik- 
ing point  of  the  long  duration  of  the  paralyses,  lasting 
for  days  and  months,  unlike  other  hysterical  dissocia- 
tions, which  are  more  transient.  Cognate  with  the  pa- 
ralyses are  the  muscular  contracturcs.  There  is  the  same 

*"  Hypnotism  "  (1904),  123-138.  -  l'V 

6  "  Principles,"  II,  612. 
•  D.  psa.  Met.,  35. 


160  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

dissociative  loss  of  control,  but  the  limb  is  moderately 
contracted  instead  of  paralyzed.  In  two  of  Janet's  cases 
of  this  type,  the  symptoms  lasted  for  thirty  years;  but  the 
symptom  is  also  liable  to  sudden  disappearance.7 

Sometimes  the  dissociation  affects  movements  of  the 
eyes;  if  the  patient  desires  to  look  at  something  in  the 
periphery,  he  must  turn  his  head  to  bring  it  into  the  field 
of  clear  vision.  On  the  other  hand,  if  he  is  startled,  the 
eyes  promptly  turn  to  the  source  of  trouble.  The  volun- 
tary function  alone  is  lost;  the  deeper  automatic  one  is 
retained.8  It  is  like  the  medulla  restoring  breathing 
when  the  will  cannot  (p.  158). 

The  function  of  speech  may  be  lost,  simulating  a  true 
motor  aphasia.  Or  only  a  certain  part  of  it  may  be  lost, 
like  the  function  of  the  vocal  cords.  The  patient  then 
^speaks  only  in  a  whisper.  Or,  more  refinedly  still,  the 
speaking  voice  may  be  lost  but  the  singing  one  kept.9 
,  f  Many  of  the  common  lapsus  linguae  are  transitory  dis- 
^  sociations  of  the  speech  function  to  which  more  detailed 
-  reference  must  here  be  dispensed  with. 

A  general  feature  of  these  dissociations  is  that  they 
affect  circumscribed^  functions  strongly  and  in  particular 
ways ;  other  closely  related  functions  may  not  be  affected. 
This  is  what  is  meant  when  one  speaks  of  a  systematic 
anesthesia,  paralysis,  or  other  dissociation.  It  is  a  sys- 
tematic dissociation  by  which  the  patient  can  sing,  but 
not  speak  aloud.  Important  systematic  paralyses  are  the 
losses  of  manual  dexterity  in  trades.  Though  there  is  no 
paralysis  of  the  hands,  the  seamstress  loses  the  ability  to 
sew,  the  ironer  to  iron.10  Such  a  dissociation  is  even 
more  specialized  than  that  of  the  crystalline  lens  from 

7  Maj.  Sympt.,  134.  »  Maj.  Sympt.,  217. 

8  Maj.  Sympt.,  206.  10  Maj,  Sympt.,  177. 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  161 

the  complex  of  eye-movements  (p.  158).  The  best 
known  dissociation  of  this  type  is  that  called  astasia- 
abasia,  in  which  the  patient  cannot  walk,  though  other  ,7 
movements  of  the  legs  are  preserved.  Even  some  move- 
ments of  locomotion,  like  jumping,  dancing,  running, 
may  persist;  only  walking  is  lost.  There  is  no  question 
of  failing  power  in  the  limbs;  the  difficulty  is  that  the 
memories,  the  "  neurograms  "  as  Prince  calls  them,  in 
which  these  functions  are  "  conserved,"  have  been  cut  off 
from  their  proper  connections.  The  neurograms  are 
still  there  and  intact.  Let  the  connection  be  restored  and 
the  process  will  discharge  as  before.  Comparing  the 
mind  to  a  telephone  switchboard,  and  the  association  of 
ideas  to  the  several  connections  possible  and  established 
on  such  a  switchboard,  the  entire  group  of  dissociative 
losses  may  be  figured  as  a  disturbance  of  electrical  con- 
nections. Loss  from  organic  dissociation  is  to  loss  from 
functional  dissociation  as  destruction  of  the  power  plant 
is  to  the  disordered  switchboard. 

\  In  the  third  main  type  of  dissociations,  the  mental 
process  is  called  "  dissociated  "  from  the  main  personal- 
ity on  the  ground  that  the  main  personality  is  not  aware 
of  it.  Among  the  organic  activities  of  which  the  main 
personality  is  normally  unaware,  we  have  mentioned  re- 
flex, metabolic,  and  other  involuntary  processes.)  This 
group  need  not  occupy  us  further.  When  we  focus  on  f* 
the  field  of  ideas  and  perceptions  of  which  the  main  per- 
sonality is  unaware,  we  must  sharpen  our  definition  some- 
what. 

Our  eyes  are  so  constituted  that  they  take  up  the  vibra- 
tions of  light-waves,  and,  preserving  essential  differences  in 
them,  transmit  them  so  that  they  can  properly  be  reacted 
to.    The  ears  do  the  same  for  sound-waves,  the  organs  of 
12 


162  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

touch  for  pressure.  They  are  means  for  perceiving  what 
goes  on  in  the  world  about  us,  so  that  we  can  act  rightly 
toward  it.  This  adjustment  of  the  reaction  to  the  stimulus 
takes  place  mainly  in  the  central  nervous  system.  Now, 
just  as  we  have,  in  the  sensory  end-organ,  means  of  per- 
ceiving something  of  what  goes  on  outside  us,  so  we  have 
means  of  perceiving  some  of  the  mental  activity  within  us. 
When  we  perceive,  in  this  way,  something  going  on  in  our 
minds,  we  say  we  are  aivare^oi  it.  Awareness  is  the  sensa- 
tion_of  mental  process,7ust  as  vision  is~the  sensation  of  light, 
amlluYdifioh  the  sensalipn"  of "sound. 

As—visual  and  auditory  sensations  have  their  obvious 
uses  for  the  organism,  it  is  reasonable  to  look  for  uses  of 
awareness.  In  Chapter  II  (p.  50),  there  was  indicated  what 
the  nature  of  this  usefulness  might  be.  In  order  that  I  may 
modify  my  conduct  in  response  to  the  telegram  and  go  to 
Buffalo  instead  of  Pittsburgh,  I  must,  apparently,  become 
aware  of  the  telegram's  contents.  In  the  normal  individual, 
this  jiwareness_  is  an  essential^  cm^ition_qf__adjusting;  one- 
self to  situations  as  complex  as  this*  The  eye  will  adjust 
ifsEtftorKghi:,  the  feet  to  the  ground,  the  breathing  to  one's 
exertions,  without  one's  knowledge;  but  when  one  must 
change  the  plans  of  a  railway  journey,  or  review  a  book, 
or  answer  a  letter,  these  things  will  not  be  accomplished 
without  some  awareness  of  the  tasks  involved.  This  is 
summed  up  in  the  technical  formula:  "  Aj;cs__o.f  ..the  JJiird 
level _ar£. jconseious."  Where  the  proper  adjustment  does 

,  /  not  occur  without  awareness,  it  is  natural  to  suppose  that 
awareness  helps  in  some  way  to  make  it. 

The  best  general  criterion  of  awareness  for  us  is  a  wholly 

empirical  one.     If  the  hysterical  cannot  tell  that  we  touch 

him  at  a  certain  point,  we  have  to  suppose  that  he  is  not 

'.aware  that  we  touch  him.     The  criterion  is  that  the  person 

•shall  be  able  to  formulate  the  mental  process  in  terms  of 

-^  ,'language  intelligible  to  another.11  If  such  a  formulation  is 
'given,  we  must  assume  awareness.  We  may  also  assume 
awareness,  in  so  far  as  it  is  probable  that  such  a  formulation 
could  be  given. 

11  When  this  is  a  process  that  is  normally  capable  of  being  so 
formulated,  as  the  normal  person  can  tell  when  he  is  being  touched. 
This  reservation  is  suggested  by  some  observations  of  Terman's 
Cf.  also  p.  319. 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  163 

The  first  group  of  these  dissociations  to  be  considered 
is  the  failure  of  awareness  for  sensations  ordinarily  con- 
scious. Some  such  examples  have  been  cited.  The  loss 
of  sensation  from  various  parts  of  the  alimentary  tract 
was  alluded  to  in  discussing  the  hysterical  disturbances 
in  taking  food.  Patients  may  not  recognize  that  the 
food  they  take  is  too  hot  or  too  cold.  Just  as  there  is  a 
loss  of  the  hunger  sense,  there  is  a  relative  loss  of  the 
sense  of  suffocation.  The  patient  with  respiratory  dis- 
sociations "  indicates  only  very  late  the  need  to 
breathe."  12  Complete  loss  of  the  sense  of  sound  is  re- 
ported by  Walton.  Word  deafness,  in  which  words  or 
musical  airs  are  heard  but  not  recognized,  is  also  re- 
ported.13 Thus  the  dissociation  may  affect  the  entire 
auditory  function,  or  it  may  cover  only  the  higher  asso- 
ciative processes.  Loss  of  smell  may  accompany  respira- 
tory difficulties. 

The  eye,  which  offers  some  delicate  examples  of  motor 
dissociation,  does  equal  service  on  the  sensory  side.  The 
dissociation  may  be  very  deep,  so  that  careful  examination 
is  needful  to  distinguish  it  from  organic  blindness.  Here, 
too.  like  the  startled  person  who  moves  his  eye,  the  hys- 
terically blind  patient  may  avoid  an  obstacle  unexpectedly 
put  before  him.  But  the  dissociation  from  the  awareness 
of  the  main  personality  seems  to  be  complete. 

The  same  preservation  of  the  more  automatic  parts  of 
the  function  is  shown  in  the  cases  in  which  the  dissociative 
blindness  affects  only  one  eye.  Then  if  the  other  eye  is 
closed,  the  patient  is  in  darkness ;  but  with  both  eyes  open, 
he  sees  binocularly.14  Dissociations  of  halves  of  the  visual 
field  also^occur.  Interesting  are  the  anomalies  of  color- 

12  Maj.  Sympt.,  250. 

18  Cf.,  with  general  reference  to  the  sensory  dissociations,  Oppen- 
heim  (tr.  Bruce),  "Textbook  of  Nervous  Diseases"  (1911),  II, 
1064-1070. 

Curschmann  (tr.  Burr),  "Textbook  on  Nervous  Diseases"  (1915), 
II.  852-858- 

"Ma/.  Sympt.,  188. 


164  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

vision.  Apparently  the  colors  at  the  blue  end  of  the  spec- 
trum vanish  most  easily,  and  red  is  the  most  persistent.15 
This  is  different  from  the  organic  color-blindness,  in  which 
the  red-green  variety  is  the  most  common. 

A  more  characteristic  dissociation  is  the  contraction  of 
the  visual  field :  the  patient  does  not  become  aware  of  things 
not  in  the  direct  line  of  vision.  Normally  the  field  of  vision 
has  an  angle  of  about  90°.  Among  the  many  dissociations 
of  hysteria  is  one  in  which  this  angle  is  reduced  to  30°  or 
20°,  or  so  much  that  only  a  point  is  left.  But,  as  in  other 
cases  mentioned,  it  is  only  with  mental  processes  of  a  cer- 
tain kind  that  this  perception  is  abolished.  Reactions  more 
or  less  automatic  may  still  be  carried  out  normally.  A 
patient  whose  visual  field  is  in  this  way  reduced  to  a  point 
may  be  perfectly  able  to  catch  a  ball.16  Another  such  case 
would  have  a  convulsion  when  he  saw  a  small  flame  as  from 
a  lighted  match.  Although  the  angle  of  the  visual  field  was 
about  5°,  the  convulsion  would  ensue  if  the  match  were 
moved  into  the  Both  degree.  This  observation  parallels 
the  case  with  muscular  anesthesia,  who  would  fall  down  if 
the  eyes  were  closed,  but  who  would  have  a  convulsion  if 
the  arms  were  placed  in  a  particular  position,  although  the 
eyes  were  closed. 

The  sleeping  mother  is  systematically  anesthetic  to  the 
noise  of  street  cars,  but  hyperesthetic  to  the  cry  of  her 
child.  If  we  await  a  certain  sound,  many  other  supra- 
liminal  sounds  may  normally  occur  without  our  becom- 
ing aware  of  them.  The  systematic  dissociation  of 
various  sensations  from  awareness,  and  the  preserva- 
tion of  a  certain  other  sensation  in  awareness,  is  what 
gives  us  "  conscious  "  attention  to  the  favored  sensa- 
tion.17 

15  Maj.  Sympt.,  204. 

1°  Maj.  Sympt.,  198. 

17  Thus  Parmelee:  "  By  attention  I  mean  simply  that  the  nervous 
system  responds  to  certain  sensations,  to  the  total  or  partial  ex- 
clusion of  other  sensations  which  are  being  received  at  the  same 
time.  .  .  .  Hence  it  is  that  attention  is  not  necessarily  an  indica- 
tion of  the  presence  of  consciousness.  .  .  ."  "  Science  of  Human 
Behavior"  (1913),  290-291. 


'/ 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  165 

Prince  adduces  the  familiar  process  of  hunting  for  an 
object  that  is  lying  immediately  before  one.     One  has  a 
systematic  anesthesia  for  it.     It  is  the  same  process  by   I 
which  the  hypnotized  subject  fails  to  perceive  the  marked  / 
card,  which  he  must  have  first  distinguished,  in  order  to  / 
meet  the  suggestion  not  to  perceive  it.18 

By  similar  dissociation,  the  victim  of  the  railway  acci- 
dent does  not  perceive  his  own  pain  or  the  cries  of  his 
fellow-sufferers  whose  pain-sensations  are  more  "  inte- 
grated "  with  their  main  personalities.  The  wounded 
soldier  does  not  perceive  his  hurt  on  the  battlefield. 
Great  emotional  crises  thus  have  a  property  of  dissociat- 
ini;  normally  intense  sensations  from  awareness.  (Mar-  /.' 

i 

tyrdom.  ) 

The  sensory  and  motor  functions  whose  dissociations 
have  been  described  may  be  recounted  as  follows  : 

Dissociations  from  trends  of  organic  survival.  Involun- 
tary or  automatic  functions.  —  Visual  accommodation  (crys- 
talline lens).  Respiratory  coordinations.  Automatic  re- 
sponses of  digestive  system  (?).  Bleeding  from  nose  and 
skin  (Hypn.  sugg.).  Formation  of  blister  (Hypn.  sugg.). 
Peristaltic  functions  (Hypn.  sugg.).  Swelling  of  lip. 

Dissociations  from  awareness.  (Preserved  integration 
with  trends  of  organic  survival  frequently  demonstrable.) 
Voluntary  functions.  —  Hemiplegia.  Paraplegia.  Con- 
tractures.  Eye-movements.  Motor  speech.  Speaking 
aloud.  Speaking  aloud  lost  but  singing  preserved.  Loss 
of  special  abilities  —  sewing,  ironing.  Loss  of  walking  but 
not  of  running  or  jumping. 

Sensory  functions.  —  (Hysterical  dissoc.).  Loss  of  or- 
ganic sensations.  Sound  and  word  deafness.  Blindness. 
Monocular  blindness.  Color  blindness.  Contraction  of 
visual  field.  Muscular  sense.  (Normal  dissoc.).  Loss  of 
irrelevant  noises  by  sleeping  mother.  Loss  of  object  imme- 
diately before  one.  Injuries  of  railway  accident  or  battle- 
field. Anesthesias  of  martyrs. 

is  Unc.,  442. 


166  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

"  In  reality,"  says  Janet,  "  what  has  disappeared  is 
not  the  elementary  sensation,  the  preservation  of  which 
we  have  just  seen;  it  is  the  faculty  which  enables  the  sub- 
ject to  realize  this  sensation,  to  connect  it  with  his  person- 
ality, to  be  able  to  say  clearly,  '  It  is  I  who  feel ;  it  is  I 
who  hear.  .  .  .'     They  are  groups  of  sensations  forming 
i  a  kind  of  system,  that  is  to  say,  the  ensemble  of  sensations 
'  coming  from  the  hand  or  leg,  which  can  no  longer  be 
.,  connected  with  the  totality  of  consciousness,  although 
they  still  exist  on  their  own  account,  and  even  determine 
!  reflexes  and  usual  movements.     Let  us  apply  the  same 
notion  to  our  paralyses;  we  shall  see  that  the  facts  are 
absolutely  of  the  same  kind." 

This  concludes  our  survey  of  the  dissociations  of  sen- 
sory and  motor  processes  from  the  main  personality.  We 
.  see  that  there  is  almost  no  limit  to  the  fineness  of  the 
analysis  which  the  dissociative  process  can  make.  The 
next  topic  concerns  the  higher  mental  processes  —  ideas 
or  memories  which  do  not  come  to  awareness.  The  cri- 
terion of  awareness  is  necessarily  the  same  as  before : 
that  the.  subject_shall  be  able  tp_deAcribe.the^men_tal  con- 
^tent.  In  order  that  an  experience  may  be  described,  it 
must  be  recalled  to  the  mentality  that  describes  it.  The 
whole  question^  of  dissociated  thought-processejL.lUHls. 
upon  recollection.  The  problem  is  to  demonstrate  in  the 
reactions  of  the  organism  the  effectiveness  of  thought- 
processes  which  the  main  personality  does  not  recall  to 
awareness. 

At  any  given  time  one  is  aware  of  only  a  small  part  of 
what  one  recalls  at  will,  or  may  subsequently  recall. 
This  material  is  conserved,  as  Prince  puts  it,  outside  the 
field  of  awareness.  But,  where  its  recall  to  awareness  is 
under  voluntary  control,  and  its  effect  upon  conduct  can- 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  167 

not  be  demonstrated  without  its  coming  to  awareness,  it 
would  be  straining  a  point  to  regard  it  as  dissociated  ma- 
terial. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  constant  experience,  that  we 
try  to  recall  something  that  refuses  to  come  into  the  per- 
sonal consciousness.  We  give  up  trying,  and  later  on  it 
comes  of  itself.  The  writer  has  noted  an  especial  ef- 
fectiveness of  recall  (hypermnesja)  just  at  waking  in 
the  morning ;  and  has  made  use  of  it  to  recall  names  and 
snatches  of  song  which  had  been  unsuccessfully  sought  at 
other  times.  As  will  appear  below,  no  limit  can  be  set 
to  the  extent  of  the  memories  which  hypermnesia  may 
recall  to  awareness,  or  the  perfection  with  which  they  are 
preserved  until  they  are  so  recalled.  These  ideas  are 
dissociated  from  the  main  personality  in  the  sense  that 
they  cannot  be  voluntarily  recalled.  That  they  are  con- 
served all  the  while,  their  later  recurrence  shows. 

The  simplest  type  of  mental  dissociation  is  a  systematic   . 

T    •          • ,  ....  nrnfl* 

amnesia,     u_i:s  to  ideas. .exactly  .what  dissociative  anes- 

tnesia  isjQ_^£nsation,  pi^paralysis  to  movement.  A  tran-  ' 
sitory  instance  was  shown  by  a  lady  who  for  years  has 
known  the  writer  well,  but  who,  in  the  attempt  to  address 
him  in  company,  cannot  recall  his  name,  searching  it  in 
embarrassment  for  several  seconds.  It  may  be  impossi- 
ble for  the  subject  to  recall  the  forgotten  experience. 
Prince's  bell-tower  case  could  not  recall  to  the  personal 
consciousness  the  original  episode  of  the  bell-towers.  It 
\vas_disspcmted,  but  effective  for  the  main  personality  in 
giving  riggjo  trie  phobia  (p.  129).  When  certain  spe- 
cial, often  clearly  important7~evefTfs  are  forgotten,  and 
have  their  conservation  afterward  demonstrated  (as  in 
the  automatic  writing  of  the  bell-tower  case),  this  kind  of  i  ^ 
systematic  amnesia  is  called  episodic  amnesia.  The  dis-  e£'_Sr* 


168  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

sociation  may  also  be  a  loss  of  memory  to  the  personal 
consciousness  of  what  happened  during  special  periods,  as 
of  days  or  weeks.  Some  cases  are  reported  in  which 
things  are  forgotten  as  fast  as  they  happen,  or  in  which 
the  whole  previous  life  is  "  forgotten."  It  has  been,  and 
still  is,  a  fascinating  experimental  problem  how  deep  the 
forgetting  goes  in  such  cases.  In  the  Reynolds  case  of 
Weir  Mitchell,  although  the  previous  experiences  could 
not  be  brought  to  awareness,  the  patient  relearned  to 
speak,  read  and  write  in  a  few  weeks.  Thus  there  was 
clearly  much  conservation  of  well  learned  processes  out- 
side awareness.  We  have  seen  how  the  dissociative  pa- 
ralysis of  eye-movements  is  abolished  to  look  at  an  unex- 
pected object ;  and  how  the  dissociative  blindness  is  abol- 
ished to  avoid  the  unexpected  object.  These  are  tokens 
of  perception  outside  of  personal  consciousness.  But  the 
dissociation  of  perception  and  voluntary  movement  is 
scarcely  seen  outside  of  abnormal  personalities  (hysteria 
especially),  or  unusual  situations  (the  battlefield).  The  , 
dissociation  of  ideas,  on  the  other  hand,  is  of  more  nearly 
equal  import  for  the  normal  and  for  the  pathological 
mind.  It  has  been  possible  to  demonstrate  the  persist- 
ence and  effectiveness  of  vast  groups  of  memories  and 
associations,  not  inferior  in  complexity  to  those  we  are 
aware  of,  that  never  enter  the  personal  consciousness. 
This  demonstration  may  be  regarded  as  among  the  fore- 
most of  psychological  achievements. 

Our  interpretations  of  mental  and  other  phenomena 
naturally  take  the  simplest  form  that  will  cover  what  we 
know.  Uranus  is  the  outermost  planet  until  irregularities  in, 
its  orbit  are  noted.  Then  it  is  natural  to  infer  a  planet 
outside  it,  though  we  cannot  see  it,  and  it  is  not  found  until 
later.  Everyone  has  his  favorite  analogies  for  the  concep- 
tual value  of  the  "  unconscious,"  which  is  to  be  taken  as  a 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  169 

collective    name    for    mental    processes    dissociated    from 
awareness.19     Prince  makes  use  of  many. 

It  is  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  our  mental  proc- 
esses are  confined  simply  to  those  we  are  aware  of.  To  do 
so  is  like  thinking  that,  because  we  do  not  see  objects 
clearly  in  the  dark,  they  are  but  shadowy  forms  without 
substance.  It  is  like  interpreting  the  mechanism  of  a  clock 
from  its  face,  with  no  account  of  the  works  behind  it.  It 
is  like  thinking  we  have  the  fullness  of  a  play  without 
knowing  what  goes  on  behind  the  scenes.  (Liebmann, 
quoted  by  Pfister.)  To_regard  our.  conscious  jnpliy_es_as  f» 
the_real  reasons  for  xiuxJniportant  acts  is  but  _a_<jggr_ee_xe-  /' 
moved  from  the  sayage_  whp_  thinks  that  the  changes  of_the 
seasons  are  made  by  his  magic.  The  unconscious  is  like  ^ 
the  unfilterable  virus ;  like  the  dark  side  of  the  moon ;  like 
the  vitals  of  the  ship  which  are  invisible  below  the  water 
line;  like  the  radium  emanations  which  cannot  be  experi- 
enced, but  which  are  necessary  for  the  interpretation  of 
other  phenomena. 

The  bringing  up  to  awareness  of  material  not  subject 
to  voluntary  recall  is  the  simplest  demonstration  of  dis- 
sociated persistence  of  ideas.  We  have  already  alluded 
to  this  as  a  feature  of  normal  life.  In  addition,  there  are 
special  conditions  which  bring  about  a  great  increase  in 
the  memories  thus  recalled  to  awareness.  Prince  enu- 
merates several  such  conditions,  the  simplest  of  which  he  ALL 
calls  abstraction.  He  means  the  concentration  of  aiten- 
tiqnjippn  a  particular  memory  (and  abstraction  from  all 
else).  The  subject  then  allows  everything  that  associates 
itself  to  this  memory  to  come  into  his  mind,  freely  and 
uncritically.  Under  such  conditions,  memories  come  to 
awareness  which  are  not  to  be  voluntarily  recalled  to 

19  Conscious,  then,  becomes  synonymous  with  recallable  to  aware- 
ness at  will.  Thus,  at  this  moment.  I  am  aware  that  I  rode  to 
Worcester  yesterday  in  a  steel  coach;  but  I  am  also  conscious  of 
a  great  many  other  events  of  yesterday,  because  T  can  voluntarily 
bring  them  to  awareness.  This  is  the  most  useful  distinction  be- 
tween consciousness  and  awareness  for  present  purposes. 


170  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

awareness.     The  property  of  recalling  forgotten  experi- 
ences is  also  asserted  for  dreams. 

In  the  quantity  of  recovered  memories,  the  greatest 
penetrations  into  the  unconscious  are  probably  made  in 
hypnosis  and  allied  states.  The  Hanna  case  of  Sidis' 
may  effectively  be  quoted  in  this  connection. 

.  .  .  The  hypnoidisation  brought  forth  phenomena  of  the 
utmost  interest  and  value.  Events,  names  of  persons,  of 
places,  sentences,  phrases,  whole  paragraphs  of  books  totally 
lapsed  from  memory,  ...  all  that  flashed  lightning-like 
before  the  patient's  mind.  .  .  .  On  one  occasion  the  patient 
was  frightened  by  the  flood  of  memories  that  rose  suddenly 
.  .  .  deluged  his  mind,  and  were  expressed  aloud,  only  to 
be  forgotten  the  next  moment.  To  the  patient  himself  it 
appeared  as  if  another  being  took  possession  of  his  tongue. 
.  .  .  The  probing  .  .  .  made  it  perfecly  clear  that  his  old 
and  forgotten  memories  did  not  perish,  that  they  were  pres- 
ent to  the  secondary  consciousness.  .  .  .  The  patient  acted 
out  and  lived  through  experiences  long  forgotten  and 
buried.20 

The  first  part  of  this  passage  suggests  a  curious  simi- 
larity to  the  flood  of  ideas  said  to  come  into  the  mind  of 
a  drowning  person.  The  interpretation  would  be  the 
same,  that  the  dissociated  memories  are  again  re-associ- 
ated with  the  personal  consciousness.  Other  cases  are 
cited  in  which  two  subjects  would  repeat  verbatim  the 
contents  of  "  fairly  long  letters,"  where  there  might  be 
no  recollection  even  of  having  written  the  letters 21 
There  seems  to  be  no  readily  assignable  limit  to  the 
amount  of  memories  conserved  outside  of  awareness. 
It  cannot  be  asserted  that  any  event  is  forgotten  jrast  Jtlie 
possibility  of  recaJlT 

Abstraction  recalls  lost  memories  and  may  reunite  them 

20 "  Psychology   of    Suggestion,"   224-225.     Unc.,   75. 
zlUnc.,  39.    Cf.  also  James,  "Principles,"  I,  681. 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  171 

permanently  to  the  main  personality,  so  that  they  are  vol- 
untarily recalled  thereafter.     Hypnotic  states  also  recall 
Iggj  memories,  as  above,  buJL  as  a  rule,  .unite  them  with 
the  main  personality  only  while  the  hypnosis  Continues. 
After  Tt  they  are  forgotten  again.     No  sharp  line  should  ^ 
be  drawn  between  this  "abstraction"  and  mild  hypnotic^ 
states.     The  more  transient  the  reuniting  of  the  lost 
memory  with  the  main  personality,  the  more  of  the  hyp-  ) 
notic  element  there  is  in  the  state  in  which  it  occurs. 

In  such  cases  as  these,  the  dissociation  is  established 
only  by  suspending  it  (reuniting  the  lost  memory  with 
the  personal  consciousness).  So  does  one  identify  amber^ 
by  dissolving  it  in  alcohol.  In  some  ways  the  more  sat- 
isfactory demonstrations  of  the  unconscious  are  those 
which  do  not  bring  the  dissociated  ideas  to  the  awareness 
of  the  main  personality  at  all.  The  chief  evidence  of  this 
kind  comes  from  automatic  writing. 

We  have  already  come  upon  automatic  writing  because  it 
was  found  to  describe  experiences  forgotten  by  the  main 
personality.     The  bell-tower  case  brought  up  its  most  sig- 
nificant, though  buried,  memories,  under  automatic  writ- 
ing.   Another  case  (Prince's  B.  C.  A.),  was  asked  to  de-   ^ <,<>»< 
scribe  the  clothes  of  a  man  she  had  talked  to  for  some      .., 
twenty  minutes.     Nothing  was  brought  out  except  that  he 
wore  dark  clothes.     Under  automatic  writing  (of  which  the 
main  personality  is  unaware)  the  subject  gave  the  follow- 
ing description,  correct  in  all  details : 22 

He  has  on  a  dark  greenish  gray  suit,  a  stripe  in  it  — 
little  rough  stripe ;  black  bow-cravat ;  shirt  with  three  lit- 
tle stripes  in  it ;  black  laced  shoes ;  false  teeth ;  one  finger 
gone ;  three  buttons  on  his  coat. 

Forgotten  portions  of  dreams  may  also  be  recovered  in 
this  way.23 

Automatic  writing  is  thus  another  means  for  demon- 
strating dissociated  ideas.     But  it  has  a  greater  interest 
22  Unc .,  53.  2S  Unc.,  59- 


178  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

for  us  in  its  own  dissociated  character.     As  in  the  case 

above,  the  content  of  the  writing  does  not  ordinarily  enter 

the  awareness  of  the  main  personality.     The  automatic 

f  writing  represents  a  series  of  complex  motor  coordina- 

,  'tions,  back  of  which  are  a  series  of  higher  mental  proc- 
^  esses  (memories  and  associations),  all  of  which  proceed 
outside  the  control  or  even  the  awareness  of  the  main 
personality.  A  smaller  personal  system,  with  memories 
and  perceptions  of  its  own,  is  "  split  off  "  from  the  main 
personality,  and  operates  a  portion  of  the  body  (that 
concerned  in  writing)  on  its  own  account. 

This  control  of  a  language-mechanism  is  a  specially 
convenient  feature  of  automatic  writing.  It  can  thus, 
by  describing  them,  give  a  very  specific  and  characteristic 
testimony  to  dissociated  ideas,  without  their  having  to  be 
brought  to  the  personal  consciousness.  In  the  abstrac- 
tion and  hypnotic  states,  they  had  to  be  brought  to  the 
personal  consciousness  to  be  so  described.  But  in  au- 
tomatic writing  the  anesthetic  hand  describes  what  stim- 
uli are  applied  to  it  —  a  screen  being  interposed  so 
that  the  subject  does  not  see  the  hand  —  and  the  main 
personality  is  unaware  of  any  stimulation  applied  to  it.24 
This  indicates  again  what  becomes  of  the  sensations 
which  the  main  personality  does  not  feel,  owing  to  hys- 
terical anesthesia.  They  are  dissociated  from  the  main 
personality,  but  go  into  the  unconscious,  and  are  pre- 
,  served  there.  By  releasing  the  unconscious,  as  is  done  in 
I  hypnotic  states  or  automatic  writing,  the  memory  of  these 

'    unfelt  stimulations  is  manifested. 

We  have  now  seen,  first,  that  different  motor  functions 
can  be  dissociated  from  the  control  of  the  main  personal- 
ity. We  have  seen,  secondly,  that  sensations  can  be  dis- 

2*  Vnc.,  57- 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  173 

sociated  from  perception  by  the  main  personality.  But 
both  the  lost  sensations  and  movements  are  demonstrable 
on  automatic  levels,  which  lie  out  of  the  control  of  the 
main  personality.  We  have  just  seen  that  memories  may 
be  dissociated  from  the  control  of  the  main  personality, 
in  that  they  cannot  be  recalled  to  its  awareness  at  will. 
But  the  things  which  have  been  dissociated  in  these  cases 
have  still  left  the  main  personality  recognizably  intact. 
The  main  personality  loses  the  faculty  to  move  a  leg,  or 
to  see  with  one  eye,  or  to  recall  certain  ideas,  or  to  control 
the  right  hand,  which,  perhaps,  is  engaged  in  the  auto- 
matic writing  of  these  same  ideas.  The  rest  of  the  or- 
ganism is  still  normally  integrated  with  the  main  person- 
ality. Thpgg^li.^gnciatinnSjjn .  whiVh  thgjriatgrial  may  he 
more  or  Jess__well  organized^Jjut  ]s  not  sufficiently  great 
or_well  organized  to  overshadow  the  main_persQnality, 
are^ .called  sjmultaneous  dissociations.  Their  manifesta- 
tions are  simultaneous  with  those  of  the  main  personal- 
ity. 

Automatic  writing  is  the  most  complicated  form  in 
which  simultaneous  dissociation  is  commonly  observed. 
It  seems  to  be  possible  for  more  than  the  hand,  perhaps 
alf  the  body,  to  behave  in  a  manner  dissociated  from  the 
control,  if  not  from  the  awareness,  of  the  other  half. 
But  as  a  rule,  if  the  dissociated  material  has  a  degree  of 
organization  like  that  shown  in  automatic  writing,  one 
of  two  things  happens. 

First,  the  split-off  ideas  and  trends  (dissociated  from 
the  main  personality,  but  well  integrated  among  them- 
selves) displj^e_j1]ejTTainj^rj>c^^ 

the_oiganisjn ;  and,  for  a  longer  or  shorter  time,  manifest 
themselves  through  the  organism.  This  is  called  som- 
nambulism, and,  in  special  cases,  alternating  or  multiple 

50^ 


s? 


174     S&       MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 
N 

personality.25  It  is  classed  as  successive ^dissociation,  be- 
cause the  states  dissociated  from  each  other  (main  and 
other  personalities),  alternate  in  the  control  of  the  organ- 
ism. 

Second,  the  split-off  ideas  and  trends  manifest  them- 
selves in  the  awareness  of  tEe  main  personality;  but  the 
dissociation  consists  in  the  fact  that,  although  they  are 
within  the  awareness  of  the  main  personality,  th^jnain 
personality  does jiot  regard  thern_as  a  part_of  itself.  The 
main  personality  feels  them  as  intrusions  upon,  perhaps 
opponents  to,  itself.  These  conditions  are  the  patholog- 
f  it»  /  ical  part  of  the  sixth  group  of  dissociations  mentioned  on 
page  157. 

*  We  shall  first  take  up  the  group  in  which  the  dissocia- 

^J.         tion  is  manifested  in  a  suspension  of  the  main  personality 

n/  tfi rom  the  control  of  the  organism.     The  simplest  of  these 

fli  ?      is  what  Janet  calls  "fits  of  .sleep."     Their  superficial  ap- 

!/         pearance  is  that  of  normal  sleep  of  varying  depth.     Such 
a  condition  may  continue  for  days  and  months  in  spite  of 

•  ^  all  efforts  to  awaken  the  sleeper.  Bodily  functions  are 
much  reduced.28  It  may  be  difficult  to  determine  the 
breathing  or  heart-action.  But  the  lighter  forms  show 
unmistakable  evidences  of  mental  activity.  In  response 
to  questions,  slight  movements  or  even  verbal  answers 
may  be  obtained.  The  main  personality,  with  its  sum  of 
memories  and  behavior-patterns,  is  displaced  from  the 
control  of  the  organism,  and  in  its  place  comes Jhe  dream- 
like state.  The  mental  content  in  the  fits  oi 


25  The  writer's  colleague,  Dr.  E.  Stanley  Abbot,  suggests  very 
pertinently  that  since,  by  definition,  independent  personal  systems  do 
not  each  carry  all  the  trends  of  the  personality,  but  only  a  portion  of 
A  them,  it  is  more  accurate  to  describe  them  as  partial  personalities, 

than  as  multiple  ones. 

29  Of  course  this  is  not  literally  a  "  somnambulism,"  but  it  be- 
longs among  the  processes  conceived  under  that  name. 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  175 

to  be  fixed  upon  particular  and  narrow  episodes.  In  a 
girl  who  has  been  frightened  by  a  bull,  a  hallucinatory  bull 
pervades  the  fits  of  sleep.27 

Thus,  fits_of_sjeep  are  states  in  which  the  main  person- 
ality jggeg. control  oyerjbhe^organism^  behavior ;  however, 
the  group  of  ideas  which  displaces  the  main  personality 
does  not  get  control  of  the  behavior.  The  practical  sus- 
pension of  motor  functions  imparts  to  this  dissociation  a 
sleep-like  character.  If  now  the  displacing  group  of 
ideas  does  have  control  over  (becomes  integrated  with) 
these  motor  functions,  the  simplest  result  is  what  Janet 
calls  the  monoideio,  somnambulisms.  In  them,  "  This 
patient  acts  over  again  a  scene  wherein  he  has  been  bitten 
by  a  dog;  that  one  reproduces  in  his  dream  the  emotion 
he  had  when  he  was  wounded  by  the  falling  lift.  This 
little  girl  fancies  a  scene  in  her  school  life  in  which  she 
was  severely  punished ;  that  young  girl  reflects  the  scene 
of  ravishment;  a  young  boy  repeats  a  quarrel  in  the 
street;  another  man  lives  through  a  chapter  he  has  read 
in  a  novel,  where  thieves  get  through  a  latticed  window 
and  bind  him  tightly  to  his  bed.  .  .  .  He  knows  not 
where  he  is ;  he  has  quite  forgotten  the  changes  that  have 
taken  place  since  the  time  he  speaks  of ;  he  often  does  not 
know  his  own  name.  His  memory,  as  well  as  his  sensa- 
tions, is  shut  up  in  a  narrow  circle."  28 

Like  the  fits  of  sleep,  these  are  dissociations  of  a  tem- 
porary character.     They  disappear,  and  behavior  again 
becomes    integrated    with    the    main    personality.     The 
shifting  of  this  integration  from  the  main  personality  to 
the  subordinate,  "  monoideic  "  system,  may  be  very  sud- 
den, or  more  gradual,  so  that  it  can  be  watched. 
\    Other  cases  are  like  the  following :  a  girl  simulates  now 
"  Maj.  Sympt.,  108.  28  Maj.  Sympt.,  31,  35. 


176  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

a  fear  of  a  lightning  flash;  now  the  reading  of  a  painful 
letter;  now  an  attempt  at  shooting.  In  such  cases  two 
or  more  monoideic  somnambulisms  of  different  content 
succeed  upon  one  another.  It  is,  apparently,  to  an  aggre- 
gation of  monoideic  somnambulisms  that  Janet  applies 
the  name  polyideic  somnambulisms.29  Such  cases,  in 
turn,  grade  into  The  so-called  fugues_  and  multiple  person- 
alities, to  which  we  now  come. 

If  a  person's  conduct  is  restricted,  as  above,  to  acting 
the  role  of  a  lioness,  of  living  through  the  scenes  of  a 
mother's  death,  or  repeating  a  street  quarrel,  such  a  som- 
nambulism may  control  the  organism,  but  will  not  support 
its  life.  It  will  not  get  food  for  the  organism  or  do 
work.  Sooner  or  later  the  organism  must  resume  its 
functions  or  it  will  not  be  able  to  maintain  itself.  The. 
fugiies  and  jrmltiple  personalities_are_cases  in  which  the 
f. .-dissociated  system  comes  to  include  more  and  more  ideas 

~l     ' 

and  memories,  and  to  have  more  and  more  control  o_y_er 
voluntary  movement.  In  the  fugues  and  multiple  per- 
sonalities,  this  has  gone  so  far  that  the  dissociated  system 
forms  a  new  personality,  which  may  be  quite  equal  to 
the  "  main  personality  "  in  the  ability  to  maintain  itself 
independently. 

To  illustrate  the  fugue:  Janet's  case  of  P,  under  the 
stress  of  worry  about  a  family  quarrel,  suddenly  feels  as 
though  struck  on  the  back  of  the  head.  Eight  days  later 
he  finds  himself  lying  abjectly  in  the  snow,  half  dead,  in 
a  distant  city.  In  the  awareness  of  the  main  personality, 
there  is  no  memory  for  what  has  happened  in  the  eight 
days.  This  is,  however,  recovered  by  special  means. 
Among  his  actions  are  that  he  returns  home,  takes  money, 
walks  some  distance,  takes  two  railway  journeys,  lodges  at 
a  hotel  in  a  distant  city,  tries  unsuccessfully  to  get  employ- 

29  Cf.,  however,  Maj.  Sympt.,  64-65. 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  177 

ment,  as  his  money  gives  out  lodges  more  cheaply ;  is  desti- 
tute when  the  main  personality  is  restored. 

There  is  now  need  for  a  further  sharpening  of  our  defini- 
tions. In  the  beginning,  we  made  independence  the. jgssen-_ 
tial  criterion  of  dissociation.  If  P's  actions  in  the  fugue 
\ftv'€~md_ependent_  of  the  main  personality,  we  should  then 
call  thenf  the  manifestations  of  a  dissociated  state.  This 
does  very  well  so  long  as  the  dissociated  material  is  simply 
a  loss  from  the  main  personality,  of  some  particular  sen- 
sation or  movement;  or  shows  independent  action  by  some 
particular  member,  like  the  hand  in  automatic  writing. 
We  can  easily  see  its  independence  of  the  main  personality, 
because  the  main  personality  is  all  the  while  present  along- 
side of  it,  though  unaware  of  it.  Now  we  have  to  decide 
whether  the  entire  organism  (instead  of  some  few  parts 
of  it),  is  JELthe  control  of  the  main-personality,  or  in  the 
control  of  a  dissociated  state.  In  the  above  case,  the  fugue- 
state  certainly  does  things  which  would  be  abnormal  for  the 
man's  main  personality.  The  man  was  happy  in  his  fam- 
ily life,  and  his  wife  was  at  the  time  pregnant.  Should 
we,  on  the  ground  of  abnormality  in  these  actions  for  the 
main  personality,  consider  that  they  are  independent  of  the 
main  personality,  and  thus  dissociated  from  it?  Logically 
it  is  defensible  to  do  this,  but  practical  considerations  are 
against  it.  Take  the  fugue  of  the  boy  Rou,30  who  runs 
away  from  home  to  go  to  sea.  On  the  way  he  hires  him- 
self to  an  itinerant  china-mender,  and  manages  to  sub- 
sist. It  would  be  unwise  to  conclude  the  existence  of  a 
dissociated  personality  in  a  boy  from  the  simple  act  of  run- 
ning away.  Suppose  the  boy  were  ill-used  at  home ;  it 
would  be  a  fair  question  whether  running  away  were  not 
in  accord  with  his  main  personality.  The  real  evidence  of 
dissociation  in  this  case  is,  first,  that  during  the  fug_ue_Jie 
thinks  no  more  about  his  ho.me :  "forgets  "  it._  The  state 
is^  dissociated  in  that  the  thought  of  home,  normally  a  daily 
and  important  one,  now  no_longer_comes_to_  awareness. 
Again,  as  soon  as  the  thougfit  of  home  does  comelo  aware- 
ness, away  goes  the  memory  of  the  fugue,  and  he  cannot 
recall  to  awareness  anything  of  how  he  came  to  be  with 
the  china-mender.  This^  amnesia,  justifies  the  assumption 
of  dissociation.  One  is  much  more  certain  of  what  the 

80  Ma;.  Sympt.,  51-53. 
13 


178  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

main  personality  can  recall  to  awareness,  than  of  what  is 

in  accord  with  the  main  personality.     The  ideas  we  now 

deal  with  are  memories   which  the  main  personality  can 

normally  recall  to  awareness.     The  absence  jpf their volunr 

A  tary  recall  to  awareness  is  for  i^_tlh^^reTerable_basis_  for 

ijconsidering  a  system_gfjthe  higher mental, processes  as  dis- 

ilsociated  from  the  mairrpersonaHty. 

Accordingly,  in  the  recognition  of  fugues  and  multiple 
personalities,  the  organism  is  controlled  by  a  state  disso- 
ciated from  the  main  personality,  either  (i)  when_the 
main  personality  has  no  memory  for  events  to  be  volun- 

_ „-.*    — •-"••—-•  ••»      -^—  • —..--—. — —  _       if     

tarily  recalled  in  that_state;  or  (2)  when  that  state  has 
no  memory  for  events  well  within  the  voluntary  recall  of 
the  main  personality.  In  the  above  fugues,  the  main 
personality  has,  on  its  return,  no  memory  for  the  events 
of  the  fugue.  Also,  during  the  fugue,  there  was  no 
thought  (or  memory)  of  the  family  at  home.  On  both 
counts,  therefore,  the  fugues  come  within  the  definition 
of  the  dissociated  state. 

Fugues  and  multiple  personalities  offer  the  principal 
demonstrations  of  persistence  in  ideas  not  recallable  to 
awareness.  Very  important  recollections,  like  those  of 
the  home,  are  for  the  time  being  lost  to  awareness.  In 
the  fugues,  this  loss  is  practically  what  makes  the  disso- 
ciated state.  In  the  above  fugues,  the  personality  in  con- 
trol of  the  organism  acts  as  the  main  personality  would 
be  expected  to  act,  if  it  had  lost  the  memories  which  have 
actually  disappeared.  The  dissociated  state  is,  practi- 
'  cally  speaking,  the  main  personality  minus  certain  impor- 
jtant  memories.  These  memories  are  relegated  out  of 
awareness  into  the  unconscious.  When  they  come  up  out 
of  the  unconscious,  down  go  the  memories  of  the  fugue 
into  the  unconscious,  just  as  one  end  of  a  scale-beam  goes 
down  when  the  other  comes  up.  In  the  unconscious,  the 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  179 

memories  of  the  fugue  are  evidently  preserved,  because 
they  can  be  elicited  by  the  special  methods  (like  hypnosis) 
that  will  explore  such  unconscious  memories.  All  these 
points  are  illustrated  in  the  fugues  cited. 

A  dissociated  state  controlling  the  voluntary  behavior 
of  the  organism  (as  the  fugue  does)  comes  under  the 
conception  of  an  alternating  personality  by  showing  the 
following  characteristics:  (i)  By  maintaining  itself 
for  a  long  period.  (2)  By  recurring  for  more  than  one 
period.  (3)  By  showing  good  capacity  for  taking  care 
of  itself  and  the  body  it  inhabits.  (4)  By  showing  dis- 
tinctive temperamental  features. 

Multiple  personality  must  be  conceived  as  a  shifting 
of  the  control  of  the  organism  from  one  personal  con- 
sciousness to  another,  which  is,  perhaps,  an  equally  well 
or  better  organized  personality.  Each  of  these  per- 
sonalities is  from  time  to  time  integrated  with  (in  con- 
trol of)  the  voluntary  activities  of  the  organism,  V  cJ' 
Among  these  mutually  dissociated  personalities,  it  is  often  h-*"" 

C..C 

unjust  to  single  out  any  one  as  the  "  main  "  personality. 
At  this  point,  therefore,  the  concept  of  the  main  person- 
ality, which  has  served  us  well  thus  far,  ceases  tem- 
porarily to  be  so  useful. 

The  Ansel  Bourne  case31  is  a  good  example  of  fairly 
long  continuance  of  the  dissociated  personality,  with  good 
ability  of  the  dissociated  personality  to  take  care  of  itself. 
Ansel  Bourne,  carpenter,  later  itinerant  preacher,  draws 
money  from  a  bank  in  Rhode  Island,  and  boards  a  street 
car.  A  dissociated  personality  supervenes,  and  continues 
for  some  two  months,  when  the  Bourne  personality  is  sud- 
denly restored,  with  the  characteristic  amnesia  for  the 
intervening  period.  The  dissociated  personality,  calling 

31  James,  "  Principles,"  I,  .391-392. 


180  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

itself  A.  J.  Brown,  has  clearly  retained  many  memories 
acquired  during  the  Bourne  state.  Brown  can  still  use 
language,  and  travel  about  in  such  a  way  as  not  to  attract 
attention.  The  similarity  of  the  names  attaching  to  the 
two  states  is  noteworthy.  Brown  also  appears,  in  speak- 
ing, to  have  alluded  to  an  incident  occurring  during  the 
Bourne  state.  It  is  difficult  to  define  how  much  of 
Bourne,  Brown  has  lost.  Those  things  appear  the  most 
completely  lost  which  have  the  most  personal  connection 
with  Bourne,  like  his  name  and  occupations.  But,  as 
though  to  compensate  for  what  is  lost,  we  find  Brown 
showing  trends  and  capacities  that  Bourne  apparently  did 
not  have.  Brown  finds  his  way  to  a  Pennsylvania  town, 
opens  a  candy  shop,  and  for  six  weeks  conducts  the 
business  in  a  normal  manner.  Now  a  "  shrunken, 
amnesic  extract  of  Mr.  Bourne  "  would  hardly  set  up  a 
new  business,  and  maintain  normal  relationship  to  it  for 
six  weeks'  time ;  when  Mr.  Bourne,  on  his  return  to  con- 
trol, asserts  that  he  knows  nothing  about  such  business. 
Actually  Bourne  is  stated  not  to  have  previously  had  the 
"  slightest  contact  with  trade."  Thus  the  dissociation 
not  only  plunges  the  personal  memories  of  Bourne  into 
,.  the  unconscious,  but  it  brings  up  out  of  the  unconscious 
certain  abilities  which  enable  Brown  to  maintain  a  candy 
business. 

It  was  elsewhere  noted  that  dissociated  states  can  bring 
up  large  memories  that  are  lost  to  the  main  personality. 
Particularly  significant  at  this  point  is  the  case  cited  by 
Janet,  of  a  woman  who  years  since  has  forgotten  the 
writing  learned  at  school,  but  in  whom  this  memory  is 
recovered  so  that  she  can  write  during  somnambulism.32 
The  alternating  personalities  are  of  interest  from  this 
82  Maj.  Sympt.,  34. 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  181 

standpoint. especially;  that  is,  the  addition  of  something 
to  the  personal  consciousness,  previously  buried  in  the 
unconscious.  Such  is  the  most  probable  interpretation 
for  the  shop-keeping  in  the  Bourne  case,  and  the  restored 
writing  in  the  somnambulism  cited  by  Janet.  The  main 
facts  of  the  situation  are  given  in  the  invaluable  table  of 
twenty  cases  collated  by  Prince.33 

We  know  already  that  a  main  personality  may  for  a  time 
lose  certain  important  memories,  whose  restoration  attests 
their  persistence  in  the  unconscious.  This  is  shown  in  the 
fugues  quoted,  and  in  the  Bourne  case.  There  is  a  some- 
what different  type  of  case,  in  which  an  apparently  som- 
nambulic  state  is  quit£_j:_M£ma£_  to  the  state  upon  which 
it  ensues.  To  these  Janet  gives  the  name  of  jd&iuJ^tinff 
somnambulisms.  They  are  represented  in  the  cases  of  Fe- 
lida^X,  Maicjeline,  Blanche  Wittemann,  Charles^  W.  In  the 
first  three  of  these  cases,  there  is  a  gradual  reduction  of 
the  personality,  with  hysterical  features  (to  be  called  II  be- 
low). Thereupon,  develops  suddenly  a  personality  with 
mental  characteristics  much  superior  to  the  previous  state, 
and  without  the  hysterical  features  (to  be  called  I).  When 
the  previous  state  (II)  recurs,  it  has  no  memory  for  the 
superior  personality,  i.e.,  for  I.  I  remembers  all  of  II, 
and  is  temperamentally  superior  to  II.  II  remembers  noth- 
ing of  I,  and  is  temperamentally  inferior.  From  Janet's 
comment  on  Felida  and  Marceline.  (Ma/.  Sympt.,  89-91)  it 
would  seem  that  the  gradual  reduction  of  the  personality 
shown  in  II  was  a  gradual  dissociation  of  characteristics  *' 
which  the  personality  originally  had.  The  superior,  domi- 
nating state,  represents  the  restoration  to  the  personality  of 
these  dissociated  tendencies.  That  is,  I  adds  nothing  to 
the  personality  which  had  never  before  been  a  part  of  the 
personality ;  but  I  brings  back  many  things  which  had  been  y 
lost  before  the  change  of  I  into  II. 

The  features  of  the  fourth  case  above,  Charles  W.,  are 
in  accord  with  this  view.  In  this  case,  II  appears  sud- 
denly after  a  railroad  accident,  and  shows  many  psycho- 
pathic features.  This  state  appears  to  have  had  no  memory 
for  childhood.  It  lasted  for  17  years,  during  which  the 

aaJourn.  Abn.  Psychol,  I  (1906-1907),  facing  p.  186. 


182  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

occupations  of  farming,  operating  a  sawmill,  and  painting 
were  followed.  Then  the  state  corresponding  to  I  above 
ensues  suddenly,  following  shock.  This  appears  to  be  the 
original  personality,  for  it  has  the  early  memories  up  to  the 
development  of  II,  and  is  without  the  psychopathic  traits. 
It  differs  from  the  others  in  that  there  was  no  memory  for 
the  seventeen  years  of  II,  including  the  trade  learned  as  II. 
Thus  in  these  dissociations,  memories  and  characteristics 
are  added  to  the  personality,  which  were  not  in  the  per- 
sonality at  the  time  of  the  change ;  like  the  shopkeeping  of 
Brown.  We  need  hardly  suppose,  however,  that  these 
features  had  never  been  part  of  the  main  personality.  The 
case  of  Charles  W.  rather  indicates  that  I  is  simply  a 
restoration  of  what  had  been  in  the  main  personality  (if  not 
always,  at  least  at  some  time)  before  the  reductions  of  II 
began  to  take  place.  In  this  case,  however,  the  personality 
of  I  soon  broke  down  again,  and  the  individual  was  lost 
sight  of.34 

It  appears  too,  that  these  changes  of  personality  have 
to  be  described  in  other  terms  than  those  of  amnesia  for 
things  recallable  to  the  awareness  of  the  other  personal- 
ity. There  are  temperamental  differences  which  are  not 
accounted  for  by  the  differences  in  what  each  personality 
can  recall  to  awareness.  Thus,  in  Felida,35  both  I  and  II 
have  the  memory  of  the  early  normal  life.  Yet,  on  the 
basis  of  these  memories  attributed  to  each  at  the  start, 
II  is  "  sad,  morose,  spiteful,  taciturn,  making  violent 
scenes,"  while  I  is  "  gay,  happy,  attending  to  duties  like 
a  normal  person."  (Prince.)  Here  the  dissociations 
and  integrations  seem  to  have  affected  other  functions 
besides  memories  to  be  recalled  to  awareness. 

There  is  another  —  and  very  much  larger  —  group  of 
changes  of  personality,  which  it  now  becomes  instructive 
to  compare  with  the  cases  just  under  consideration.  This 

84  Mayer,  Journ.  Amer.  Med.  Assoc.  (Dec.  14,  IQOT"),  1601-1605. 

85  Cf.  Azam,  "  Hypnotisme,  double  conscience,  etc.,"  Paris  (1887), 
63-69. 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  18« 

is  the  so-called  manic-depressive  psychosis.  A  form  of 
it  once  had  the  name  of  "  circular  insanity,"  from  the 
regular  alternations  of  personality  it  produced.  The 
comparison  between  it  and  the  dissociated  personalities, 
for  the  features  of  concern  to  us,  is  tabulated  below. 
For  convenience,  the  corresponding  characteristics  of. de- 
mentia praecox,  another  important  psychosis,  are  ap- 
pended, as  we  are  about  to  take  up  the  dissociative  char- 
acters of  this  condition  also. 

For  the  moment  we  have  to  do  only  with  the  dissoci- 
ated personalities  and  the  manic-depressive  states.  The 
chief  distinction  between  the  two  is  that,  in  the  dissoc|- 
ated  personalities,  the  character  of  the  different  states  is 
very  much  more__deperident  on  differences  in  the  memories 
which  come  to  awareness  in  the  different-states.  In  the 
manic-depressive  conditions,  the  altered  states  are  more 
dependent  ori  changes  in  mood,  which  is  notoriously  inde-  ^ 
pendent  of  the  memories  recallable  to  awareness.  May 
it  not  be  that  Felida,  who  in  many  ways  combines  the 
features  of  dissociated  personality  and  manic-depressive 
psychosis,  manifests  a  connecting  link  between  the  two? 
In  the  first,  inferior  state  of  Felida,  she  shows  a  reduced 
and  depressed  personality  because  there  are,  dissociated 
from  the  personality,  certain  elements  which  make  for  its 
happiness  and  general  efficiency.  In  the  second  state  she 
is  more  happy  and  efficient,  because  these  elements  are 
again  integrated  with  the  personality.  But,  in  neither  the 
superior  nor  the  inferior  state,  is  there  any  awareness  of 
these  elements.  In  both  states  they  are  unconscious,  / 
while  at  the  same  time  having  a  profound  effect  upon  the 
mood.  The  lesson  that  Felida  and  the  other  cases  which 
parallel  her  in  this  respect  carry  is,  that  dissociative  (and 
redintegrating)  processes  can  induce  changes  of  mood 


184 


MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 


without  corresponding  changes  in  the  content  of  aware- 
ness.    The  process  inducing  changes  of  mood  operates 

V 


Onset 
of  attack 


Memory 


DISSOCIATED 
PERSONALITY 
More      frequently 
sudden,    even   mo- 
mentary, hut   may 
be  gradual. 

Amnesias  the  dom- 
inant feature; 
each  state  may 
have  memory  for 
itself  alone  (re- 
ciprocal amnesia), 
or  one  state  may 
have  memory  for 
others  which  have 
no  memory  for  it. 
All  this  in  the 
presence  of  mental 
clearness  during 
the  individual 
states. 


V 

MANIC-DEPRESSIVE 

PSYCHOSIS 
Regularly  gradual, 
through    weeks   or 
months,          rarely 
sudden. 

No  disturbance  of 
memory  for  pe- 
riods in  which  the 
patient  is  mentally 
clear.  If  there  ap- 
pear incidents  of 
confusion  or  de- 
lirium, memory 
for  these  is  poor. 
Except  for  these 
episodes,  memory 
is  as  continuous 
as  with  the  nor- 
mal person. 


DEMENTIA  PRAECOX 
Regularly    insidious,    cov- 
ering months  or  years. 


Memory  continuous.  If 
there  appear  incidents  of 
confusion  or  delirium, 
memory  for  these  is  apt  to 
be  good.  Apparent  poor- 
ness of  memory  often  due 
to  failure  to  cooperate  in 
examination,  or  failure  to 
register  impressions,  from 
lack  of  interest  in  exter- 
nal surroundings. 


Mood 


Halluci- 
nations 


Changes  somewhat 
between  states, 
and  along  more 
various  lines,  not 
within  such  wide 
limits  as  in  manic- 
depressive  psy- 
chosis. 


Denied  by  Janet 
for  the  fugue. 
Not  a  prominent 
feature. 


Change  of  mood 
the  dominant  fea- 
ture. Varies  along 
definite  lines, 

from  extreme  eu- 
phoria to  extreme 
melancholy. 


Reported  with 
some  frequency, 
but  seem  more  de- 
pendent on  misin- 
terpretation of  ac- 
tual sensations, 
i.  e.,  resembling  il- 
lusions. Little 
systematized. 


Growing  apathy  toward 
ordinary  interests  of  life. 
Sometimes,  also,  extreme 
affective  reactions  to 
trivial  circumstances. 

("  Ataxia  of  emotion.") 
Supposedly  phenomena  of 
transference  and  affective 
symbolism. 

Hallucinations  the  domi- 
nant feature.  "  The 
Voices."  Of  continuous 
occurrence,  often  showing 
high  organization  in  their 
mental  content. 


altogether  in  the  unconscious.  We  may  say  therefore, 
that  dissociations  of  personality  and  manic-depressive 
states  are  founded  upon  two  distinct  types  of  dissoci- 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  185 

ation.38  In  dissociations  of  personality,  as  typified  by 
the  Ansel  Bourne  case,  what  was  recallable  to  awareness 
is  thrust  out  of  recallability  to  awareness  and  later 
brought  back  into  it  again.  It  is  an  interchange  between 
the  memories  accessible  to  awareness,  and  the  memories 
not  so  accessible  (which  latter  go  to  make  up  the  uncon- 
scious). The  manic-depressive  psychoses  are  not,  in  this  // 
sense,  dissociations  oi^_^ersonality^  The  changes  of^ 
mood  which  distinguish  them  are  induced  by  another 
type  of  dissociation,  which  breaks  up  existing  associations 
and  forms  new  associations,  among  the  mental  processes 
(trends)  of  which  we  are  not  aware,  i.e.,  those  of  the 
unconscious.  These  changes  in  the  unconscious  are  what 
effect  the  changes  in  mood.  Prince  recounts  the  experi- 
mental production  of  such  a  change.  Thus,  a  happy 
attitude  toward  the  weather,  suggested  under  hypnosis, 
persists  after  the  hypnosis,  when  the  fact  of  suggestion  is 
no  longer  recallable  to  awareness.  The  unconscious  ideas 
manifest  themselves  in  consciousness  by  a  characteristic 
change  in  the  moodJ!7  Felida  shows  the  type  of  disso- 
ciation between  conscious  and  unconscious  in  that  II  loses 
the  memories  of  I;  she  shows  the  type  of  dissociation 
among  unconscious  trends  in  that  II  gains,  without  cor- 
responding access  of  awareness,  a  mood  which  the  other 
personality  lacked.38 

We  have  thus  far  examined:  (i)  Dissociations  of  in- 
fra-cerebral processes  (mostly  normal).  (2,3)  Dissoci- 

/     SB  VVith  reference  to  these  points,  Cf.  August  Hoch,  "  A   Study 
(  of  the  Benign  Psychoses,"  Johns  Hopkins  Hosf>.  Bui.,  26  (1915),  165- 
\i6o. 

»'  Unc.,  67. 

38  It  might  be  reasoned,  of  course,  that  I  was  induced  by  the 
dissociation  of  certain  inhibitions  from  II,  instead  of  by  a  redin- 
tegration of  activity  to  I.  Either  view  accords  with  interpreting 
the  mood  change  as  a  dissociation  wholly  in  the  unconscious.  The 
view  of  the  text  is  the  simpler  and  more  natural  one. 


186  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

ations   (mostly  pathological),  like  the  hysterical  anes- 
thesias and  paralyses,  of  peripheral  bodily  processes  which 
are  regularly  conscious^     (4)  Dissociations  from  aware- 
ness of  central  processes   (ideas,  memories)   and  their 
special  expressions  like  automatic  writing.     (4)  Dissoci- 
ations of  ideas  that  suspend  the  main  personality  from 
the  control  of  the  organism,  and  uje_the_organism.  to 
live  out  their  own  trends  (sojrinambulisnis.) .     Also  highly 
organized  dissociated   systems  which  maintain  the  or- 
ganism indefinitely  in  a  dissociated  character  (multiple 
\  personalities).     (5a)  Dissociations  and  integrations  not 
'  directly  affecting  the  content  of  awareness,  but  operating 
i  especially  in  the  unconscious  (inducing  mood  changes  as 
1  in  manic-depressive  conditions). 

We  reach  the  sixth  of  the  groups  of  page  157;  namely, 
those  in  which  the  dissociation  is  expressed  in  the  foreign 
attitude  of  the  main  personality  toward  a  special  portion 
of  the  ideas  of  which  it  is  aware. 

Every  thought  in  the  awareness  of  a  normal  person 
is  accepted  by  that  person  as  one  of  "  his  "  own  thoughts. 
Thus  the  thought  is  integrated  with  the  main  personality. 
In  the  instances  thus  far  cited,  nothing  has  been  dissoci- 
ated from  the  main  personality  except  by  existing  outside 
of  it  in  the  unconscious.  In  the  cases  now  to  be  con- 
sidered, thoughts  occur  of  which  the  subject  is  aware  and 
which  he  can  minutely  describe,  yet  without  normal  inte- 
gration with  the  main  personality.  The  main  personal- 
ity regards  such  thoughts  as  foreign  to  itself.  The  pre- 
cise attitude  it  takes  toward  these  intrusive  thoughts  va- 
ries in  different  cases,  as  the  illustrations  show. 

A  very  slight  dissociation  from  the  main  personality, 
difficult  to  formulate  in  general  terms,  is  concretely  shown 
in  Case  F.  Of  the  ideas  mentioned  on  page  64,  he  says 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  1H7 

that  they  come  through  his  mind  talking  to  him.  This 
is  the  initial  step  in  such  dissociation:  the  separating  oLbis 
tnilld  and  him,  t^e,  thejnain  personality^  listen^  while  his 
mind  suggests  _things__to_Jiim.  TTiTs  mind-talk  does  not 
have  tone-quality,  comes  jneiely  as  thoughts.  He  gave  the 
Japan-Hawaii  material  (p.  64)  as  an  example  of  the 
mind-talk.  In  the  garden  he  picks  up  stones  which  are 
inspired;  they  are  dropped  by  ravens  as  a  reward  for 
working  out  the  "  No.  3  system  "  which  his  mind  evolved. 
In  speaking  of  other  ideas,  "  It  seemed  as  if  my  spirit  or 
soul  or  something  had  separated  or  segregated." 

Case  L  speaks  of  some  abnormal  actions,  like  sudden  fall- 
ing down,  as  being  produced  by  "  dictates."  These  dictates, 
again,  are  foreign  to  the  main  personality,  but  still  included 
within  the  patient's  psychic  organism.  He  says  he  did  not 
know  why  he  would  fall  down ;  he  simply  had  to ;  that  he 
received  "  sort  of  dictates  "  which  he  had  to  follow,  though 
denying  that  anyone  put  thoughts  into  his  mind  or  made 
him  do  things.  "  I  did  not  faint,  but  sort  of  swooned. 
...  I  was  not  unconscious  " ;  and,  very  descriptively,  "  I 
could  have  spoken  if  I  had  wanted  to,  but  my  dictates  would 
not  let  me."  He  "  received  dictates  to  fall ;  something  in 
my  own  mind  tells  me  to  fall.  I  don't  hurt  myself  because 
I  know  it  is  coming.  A  persistent  dictate  kept  at  me  until 
I  fell.  I  couldn't  get  up  at  once  because  the  dictate  wouldn't 
let  me.  I  know  it  was  ridiculous  but  I  was  compelled  to 
do  it.  The  same  thing  comes  over  me  in  all  these 
spells." 

In  ordinary  speech,  we  talk  of  "  thoughts  coming  into  " 
our  minds,  in  language  not  very  different  from  that  cited. 
The  difference  is,  that  we  correct  our  thoughts  if  they 
are  foolish,  like  F's;  or  do  not  respond  to  their  orders, 
as  L  does.  In  F  and  L  the  main  personality  has  not  this 
control;  hence  their  ideas  are  said  to  be  dissociated. 

Case  A  describes  the  incidence  of  the  dissociated  ideas 
as  a  "  grilling "  of  her  mind,  but  of  a  pleasurable  char- 
acter. No  special  incident  that  occasioned  its  beginning 
was  recalled.  "  It  just  popped  into  my  head  the  same  as 
other  things  do.  ...  It  was  very  pleasant.  In  the  morn- 


188  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

ing,  all  through  my  morning  work,  it  was  just  company  for 
me.  It  was  all  my  imagination,  I  can  say  that,  but  it  was 
very  pleasant.  (Was  it  ever  annoying?)  Sometimes,  if 
I  would  wake  in  the  night."  However  in  general,  "  It  was 
helpful.  ...  It  would  remind  me  of  things,  or  it  would 
say  things  to  me ;  perhaps  it  was  semiconsciousness.  But  if 
I  was  going  out,  it  would  say,  '  Now,  Mrs.  A.,  have  you  got 
the  key  in  your  pocket-book  ?  '  Or,  '  Do  what  will  please 
Mr.  A/  or  '  Try  to  please  X.'  It  was  a  voice,  an  imaginary 
voice.  I  know  I  encouraged  it  and  let  it  grow  on  me." 

Although  in  these  remarks  the  patient  does  not  refer 
the  grilling  to  any  source  outside  herself,  she  elsewhere 
refers  it  to  the  influence  of  certain  men  whom  she  names. 
A  patient  will  now  refer  such  ideas  to  another  person, 
now  recognize  them  as  proceeding  from  his  own  organ- 
ism, though  not  as  part  of  the  main  personality.  There 
is  no  break  between  the  dissociations  which  are  "  pro- 
jected "  outside  the  individual  and  those  which  are  not. 
There  is  entire  continuity  between  the  various  interpreta- 
tions. 

The  following  Case  D  presents  these  features  with 
more  introspective  detail,  and  with  some  tendency  to  ex- 
ternalize the  ideas,  i.e.,  refer  them  to  other  persons. 
There  are  also  the  beginnings  of  unpleasant  content  in 
the  dissociated  trends.  It  should  be  remarked  that  the 
diagnosis  in  this  case  is  Graves'  Disease,  which  is  an  in- 
toxication from  the  thyroid  gland.  There  is  a  definite 
physiological  poisoning  related  to  the  dissociation. 

Upon  convalescence  from  an  acute  attack  the  patient  tells, 
retrospectively,  how  she  heard  voices  of  her  friends  talk- 
ing to  her ;  she  saw,  and  talked  with  them.  At  one  time 
hearing  the  voice  of  a  man  who  was  dead,  she  thought  it 
must  be  his  spirit  talking.  She  held  a  long  conversation 
with  her  mother,  her  uncle  and  her  aunt  who  are  dead ; 
they  advised  her  what  to  do.  Finally,  when  the  nurse  told 
her  these  were  hallucinations,  she  was  able  to  believe  it; 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  189 

and  after  that,  although  the  voices  continued  audible  for  a 
while,  later  they  lost  their  audible  quality,  and  occurred 
merely  as  thoughts  coming  into  her  mind.  (A  lessening 
of  the  dissociation,  approaching  more  nearly  the  previous 
observations  of  Cases  F  and  L.)  "I  still  have  a  lot  of 
stray  thoughts  in  my  head — a  lot  of  words  that  I  can't 
express.  I  often  talk  to  myself  and  say  things  I  don't 
mean.  They  are  inaudible,  just  loose  words  floating  in  my 
head.  .  .  .  They  don't  represent  me  at  all,  they  don't  rep- 
resent what  I  think,  but  they  don't  now  take  the  place  of 
anyone  else  talking.  ...  I  know  they  are  my  thoughts  in 
my  own  head." 

At  the  onset  of  another  and  ultimately  severer  attack, 
this  case  began  to  be  similarly  troubled  with  auditory  hal- 
lucinations, into  which  she  preserved  some  insight.  She 
knows  they  are  voices  in  her  head,  not  people  talking 
(though  they  have  sound  qualities)  ;  and  there  seems  to  be 
a  constant  soliloquy  going  on  in  her  head.  At  times  it  is  as 
if  she  is  the  third  person  sitting  back  and  listening  to  the 
conversation  between  two  other  people.  Sometimes  the 
voices  were  entertaining,  like  a  continuous  performance 
without  any  volition  on  her  part.  But  often  the  contents 
are  all  about  "  disgusting  sexual  subjects  " ;  accompanied 
by  visual  hallucinations  of  sexual  organs.  She  reiterates,/ 
"They  are  not  voices  really;  I  am  just  carrying  on  a  con-/ 
versation  with  myself." 30 

The  dissociated  ideas  are  more  often  referred  to 
sources  external  to  the  patient.  Their  content  may  be  in- 
different, or  even  pleasant,  to  the  main  personality,  but 
is  more  commonly  repulsive. 

At  a  concert  which  Case  L  attended  about  the  beginning 
of  his  illness,  he  saw  a  girl  toward  whom  he  had  a  secret 
attachment.  As  he  sat,  people  made  remarks  in  a  nice 
way  about  him ;  they  could  read  his  mind  and  knew  he  loved 
the  girl  and  had  loved  her  for  two  years;  seemed  to  know 
it  was  a  sort  of  Icvesickness  he  had.  One  remark  was, 
**  A  pair  of  beautiful  flowers  " ;  another,  "  L  is  very  good 

39  Just  as  in  a  dream,  when  one  holds  conversations  with  other 
persons,  it  is  really  dissociated  systems  of  the  dreamer's  own 
mind  that  are  conversing. 


190  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

and  well  guarded."  So  far  as  the  perceptions  in  this  epi- 
sode are  concerned,  they  may  well  be  illusions.  Something 
was  said,  which  the  patient  misunderstandingly  referred 

.,  to  himself.  He  externalizes,  or  "projects"  (p.  188),  his 
own  erotic  ideas  to  people  outside  him.  He  hears  them 

K  say  things  which  accord  with  those  ideas.  When  a  patient 
fi  )  falsely  and  foolishly  refers  experiences  to  himself,  he  is  said 

.<>to  have  "  ideas  of  reference."  Ideas  of  reference  are  es- 
pecially marked  in  dementia  praecox,  as  compared  with 


ojher  forms  of  mental  disease.     They  are  allied  to  the  actual 
•j&fiallucinations,  in  that  they  "  project  "  a  trend  of  the  pa- 
•'i-j    tient's  own  mind. 

«•  Case  M  represents  the  process  in  a  more  definitely  hallu- 

cinatory form.  She  too,  however,  begins  by  saying  that 
during  the  last  three  or  four  years  she  has  been  "  peculiarly 
sensitive  to  sounds."  They  seemed  to  be  the  voices  of 
people,  of  men  or  women  that  she  used  to  know  years  ago. 
Sometimes  they  said  pleasant  things  so  that  she  would 
laugh  ;  at  other  times  they  seemed  to  say  what  she  was 
thinking  or  doing.  Sometimes  they  seemed  to  crowd  one 
another  so  closely  that  one  "could  almost  feel  them."  If 
she  is  making  the  bed,  they  talk  about  the  bed  linen  and  all 
the  marks  on  it.  If  she  is  washing  dishes,  they  will  tell 
all  the  marks  on  the  silver,  etc.  It  is  very  annoying  and 
she  has  tried  all  sorts  of  things  to  get  rid  of  them.  She 
does  not  like  to  go  to  theatres  because  the  voices  said  things 
to  her  so  loud  that  she  thought  they  might  go  from  her  mind 
t^  other  people's  minds.  Sometimes  she  thinks  she  will  do 
thing  and  then  does  something  else  so  that  they  will  not 
always  know  what  she  is  going  to  do. 


The  dissociated  ideas  mav  be  attributed,  not  to  other 
y  ' 
•  s  ,.      human   beings,    but   to   supernatural   sources.     Case   N 

furnishes  a  typical  example  of  this.  When  the  Divine 
Mind  first  commenced  to  speak  to  him,  he  did  not  actually 
hear  the  voices,  but  the  thoughts  were  merely  put  into  his 
mind.  The  ideas  are  suggested  to  him.  The  Divine 
Mind  told  him  he  was  to  be  head  of  a  great  corporation  ; 
also  the  sun.  moon  and  stars  sent  him  messages  con- 
firming what  the  Divine  Mind  had  told  him. 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  191 

Asked  if  he  did  not  feel  like  eating,  he  said,  not  in  the 
way  the  Divine  Mind  told  him  to.  The  Divine  Mind  told 
him  to  Fletcherize ;  while  he,  himself,  felt  like  "  pitching  in 
and  eating  a  good  square  meal."  He  was  directed  to  take 
no  tea  and  coffee,  and  to  take  milk  instead ;  and  the  Divine 
Mind  had  duck-eggs  sent  to  the  table  instead  of  hens'  eggs. 
He  mentioned  having  met  a  distinguished,  and  at  that  time 
deceased,  capitalist  at  a  previous  institution;  and  when 
asked  how  long  he  had  been  there  he  paused  and  said :  "  I 
do  not  care  to  say.  The  Divine  Mind  said  I  did  wrong  to 
mention  it  at  all." 

This  case  (N),  and  also  Case  L,  illustrate  that  ideas 
may  be  externalized  without  being  repudiated  by  the  main 
personality.  Such  voices  are  "  friendly,"  often  from  su- 
pernatural sources,  and  inform  the  main  personality  of 
items  which  it  accepts ;  while  others  are  "  hostile,"  and 
inform  the  main  personality  of  items  which  it  repudiates. 
Case  J  below  is  told  by  the  voice  of  Christ  that  J  was  for- 
merly Pericles;  and  he  believes  it.  (Friendly,  accepted 
"voice.")  On  the  other  hand,  vile  words  are  put  into 
his  mind  from  other  sources.  (Hostile  "voices,"  re- 
pudiated.) The  mind-talk  of  Case  F  was  also  at  one 
time  referred  by  him  to  divine  inspiration.40 

Voices  with  a  content  of  varying  affect  are  present  in 
Case  B.  They  were  observed  for  some  eighteen  months, 
during  which  they  became  rather  more  prominent.  When 
first  asked  to  describe  them,  she  said  the  one  which  talked 
the  most  was  a  former  physician.  The  voices  said  all  kinds 
of  things;  many  of  them  were  very  disagreeable.  Some- 
times they  were  funny,  and  she  would  laugh  at  them.  She 
gave  only  indifferent  examples,  as  Thank  you  and  Merry 

40  Significant  in  this  connection  is  Mill's  definition  of  mysticism 
as  "  neither -more  _nor  less  than  the  ascribing  of  objective  existence 
tQ.^he-  subjective  creations  of  the  mind,  and  believing  that  by 
•watching-aiid  contemplating  these  ideas  of  its  own  making  it  can 
reajt-w-bat  takes-  -place  in  the  world  without."  It  is  most  aptly 
that  Dr.  Moses  adds  his  own  conception  of  mysticism  as  an  "jit- 
tetnpt_to  .put.  asunder  what  God  hath  joined  together."  Path.  A. 
Rel.,  69,  129. 


192  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

Christmas.  Later  the  troublesome  element  became  more 
prominent;  she  heard  her  intimate  friends  say  bad  things 
to  her,  things  that  she  could  not  bear.  When  these  same 
people  came  to  visit  her,  they  did  not  talk  at  all  in  this  way ; 
she  could  not  understand  this.  Later  she  remarked  that  the 
voices  said  funnier  things  than  they  used  to,  that  they  told 
her  jokes,  and  she  could  not  help  laughing  at  them.  As 
previously,  however,  they  continue  to  call  her  a  "  bad 
woman."  She  is  noted  to  start  with  terror  at  some  fright- 
ful things  she  hears,  again  cries  at  some  slandering  thing, 
and  again  bursts  forth  in  laughter  at  something  funny. 

Here  the  dissociated  ideas  are  unquestioningly  re- 
ferred to  other  persons,  who  are  identified;  and  the  dis- 
agreeable element  in  them  is  more  prominent  than  in  the 
previous  cases. 

,/  The  following  Case  C  has  been  under  observation  for 
some  fifteen  years.  She  presents  a  wealth  of  the  phe- 
nomena under  discussion,  with  special  introspective  de- 
tail. The  dissociated  ideas  are  indifferent,  comic  or  re- 
pulsive. She  shows  also  the  continuity  between 
"thoughts"  and  "voices,"  as  well  as  between  the  dif- 
ferent grades  of  externalizing  or  "  projecting "  them, 
i.e.,  attributing  them  to  outside  sources.  In  this  last 
respect,  the  first  beginnings  of  the  dissociation  are  trace- 
able two  or  three  years  before  hospital  care.  At  that 
time,  instead  of  showing  a  normal  sociability,  she  would 
sit  alone  in  her  room,  apparently  daydreaming,  and  in 

\  explanation  said  something  about  her  bad  thoughts. 
Even  when  the  psychosis  is  clearly  established,  she  con- 
tinues to  recognize  the  ideas  as  belonging  to  herself, 
saying : 

"  I  get  into  different  trains  of  thought  and  carry  them 
right  along.  You  want  to  say  something  and  something 
else  comes  right  in."  That  is,  she  feels  some  of  her  think- 
ing to  be  dissociated  from  voluntary  control.  As  she  puts 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  193 

it,  more  clearly  than  another  person  should  attempt  to  do: 
"  I  can't  seem  to  get  my  mind  together.  There  —  I  can't  — 
seem  to  —  to  —  control  my  imagination,  it  is  imagining  a  lot 
of  peculiar  things.  .  .  .  The  things  I  like  to  do  I  can't  pos- 
sibly do,  but  I  think  of  these  vague  things  I  can't  possibly 
do."  But  the  beginnings  of  projection  are  also  present  in 
the  following:  "  Why  I  should  think. of  these  things  I  don't 
know.  Something  seems  to  push  jny  mind  into  a  channel 
I  don't  want  it  to  be  in,  ,_,...!  seem  to  be  bound  to  find  out 
a"Tot  of  things  I  am  not  interested  in  as  if  some  one  was 
teasing_me."  No  cfc/JmYtfjsxternafizationJiere,  "  something  " 
causes  it ;  "  as  if  "  someone  did  so.  But  the  projection  is 
nevertheless  establishing  itself.  "  I  think  some  one  has 
taken  the  liberty  of  transmitting  thoughts  into  my  mind  that 
I  know  nothing  about."  Seven  months  later  the  projection 
is  clear.  "  They  put  a  lot  of  stuff  into  my  head  that  I  don't 
want  there  at  all." 

Two  months  later  still,  nurses  and  those  about  her 
figure  as  the  authors  of  the  ideas,  and  subsequently  a 
man,  who  is,  however,  an  indefinite  figure.  She  describes 
how  her  personal  consciousness  is  interfered  with  in  its 
trains  of  thought.  She  has  much  difficulty  in  starting 
anything.  Even  when  she  got  started  she  could  not  tell 
what  to  say;  some  queer  notion  would  crop  out  that  she 
had  not  intended  to  speak  about.  Thus  she  was  pre- 
vented from  performing  a  calculation  test :  "  Don't  you 
see,  it  won't  start  at  all."  Other  expressions  are : 

"  I  can't  remember  things.  When  I  try  to,  so  many  inter- 
ruptions come  in  that  my  mind  seems  to  be  all  broken  up." 
"  My  mind  doesn't  always  make  connections.  .  .  .  Some- 
thing makes  a  blank  in  my  mind  and  I  can't  connect  any- 
thing."  "  Don't  you  see,  when  a  lot  of  ideas  come  to  you 
that  you  don't  want  to  know  anything  about,  it  is  not  very 
pleasant."  Before  admission  to  the  hospital,  she  had  ex- 
pressed the  feeling  that  her  "  brain  wouldn't  work."  Early 
in  the  psychosis,  she  expressed  this  feeling  of  interference 
with  her  normal  thought  in  some  very  instructive  analogies : 
"  My  mind  seems  to  be  in  layers  like  strata  in  geology."  X 
14  A 


194  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

"  It's  like  going  through  a  river,  where  there  are  a  lot  of 
weeds  and  they  get  in  your  way  and  you  can't  get  through." 
"  Sometimes  I  seem  all  of  a  sudden  to  sink  right  down  into 
deep  thought  as  though  I  were  covered  up  in  a  snow- 
bank." 41 

"  It  is  like  the  difference  between  a  good  and  a  bad  person. 
If  I  could  gather  up  a  good  will  it  would  be  all  right.  In- 
stead these  vague  ideas  seem  to  be  wandering  around  as  if 
they  were  going  through  a  sort  of  labyrinth." 

As  to  the  form  in  which  these  dissociated  ideas  were 
presented  to  her,  she  says  that  there  are  many  "  voices," 
sometimes  audible,  sometimes  only  thoughts.  There  is 
certainly  no  sharp  distinction.  As  to  what  the  ideas 
were  about,  one  does  not  obtain  so  clear  an  account  as 
her  excellent  formal  descriptions  of  them  would  promise. 
Early  in  the  psychosis,  she  expressed  a  difficulty  in  re- 
taining them:  "  O,  it's  gone  from  me  if  I  don't  tell  it 
at  once."  Such  amnesia  is  not  characteristic  of  dementia 
praecox,  however. 

Among  the  special  topics  she  described  were : 

"  All  at  once  I  seemed  to  wish  somebody  would  die.  I 
didn't  mean  it,  you  know.  .  .  ."  "  You  stop  putting  that 
inclination  to  pull  my  hair  out  into  my  mind."  (To  a  nurse) 
"  Stop  tempting  me  to  break  things !  "  "A  cruel  mind  goes 
through  my  head."  "  The  story  of  Faust  came  to  me  and 
I  could  not  get  it  out  of  my  mind."  The  last  two  of  these 
are  externalized ;  the  first  three  are  referred  to  herself,  but 
independently  of  her  voluntary  control.  When  the  ideas 
are  comic,  they  are  not  clearly  externalized :  "  I  get  some 
awfully  funny  ones,  I  seem  to  be  quoting  somebody.  .  .  ." 
(Laughing  without  obvious  cause)  "  Well,  that's  the  funni- 
est thing  I  ever  heard  of  in  my  life.  What  a  joke !  "  Sev- 

41  Some  of  these  expressions  of  "  mental  standstill,"  as  August 
Hoch  called  them,  suggest  the  "  Third  Night "  state  of  St.  John 
of  the  Cross,  where  "memory  and  will  perish.  The  soul  floats 
corpse-like  on  the  waters  of  Lethe.  The  sense  of  time  and  space 
is  lost ;  the  feelings,  the  intellect  and  the  emotions  are  dead ;  the 
personality  has  completely  evaporated ;  in  brief  the  patient  (sic) 
is  a  perfect  blank."  Path.  A.  Rel.,  97-98. 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  195 

eral  allusions  are  made  to  repulsive  ideas.  These  are  uni- 
formly externalized.  She  becomes  irritable  at  times,  says 
she  cannot  stand  it  any  longer,  if  they  persist  in  putting  such 
bad  thoughts  into  her  mind :  "  Vile  is  no  name  for  them." 
(What  about?)  "  You  know  quite  well."  "  They  are  tak- 
ing away  my  innocent  mind  —  they  are  putting  vile  thoughts 
into  my  mind."  (Wheeling  on  the  nurse)  "  How  dare  you 
say  I  am  not  decent?"  (Nurse  had  not  spoken.)  "What 
do  you  mean,  all  you  devils,  causing  me  to  stay  awake?  I 
shall  be  crazy  soon,  listening  to  all  these  vile  things  you  are 
putting  into  my  head."  Again  speaks  of  their  destroying 
her  young,  innocent  mind.  She  thinks  people  say  nasty 
things  to  her,  swear  at  her  and  put  bugs  on  her.  Recently, 
there  is  a  record  of  a  similar  visual  hallucination,  of  "  dis- 
agreeable figures  rushing  through  the  air." 

Case  J  is  characterized  by  dissociated  ideas  of  ex- 
tremely repulsive  content,  which  he  externalizes,  and 
toward  which  he  reacts  with  strong  emotions  of  disgust. 
It  is  said  that  a  few  days  previous  to  his  hospital  ad- 
mission he  began  to  imagine  that  people  were  talking 
about  him,  that  they  made  bad  remarks  and  made  him 
think  bad  things.  When  brought  for  examination  his 
look  was  angry,  and  his  whole  demeanor  threatening. 
Yet  when  he  was  civilly  addressed  by  the  physician,  a 
comparatively  gentlemanly  reaction  came  from  beneath 
this  exterior.  At  times  he  even  smiled  pleasantly,  speak- 
ing with  a  very  natural  and  deferential  manner.  Ap- 
parently it  was  not  toward  the  examiners  that  his  angry 
feelings  were  directed,  but  rather  toward  the  repulsive 
ideas  coming  involuntarily  into  his  mind. 

Thus  during  the  interview  he  would  suddenly  look  very 
angry  again.  With  a  fierce  scowl  he  would  turn  his  head 
aside  and  utter  a  curse.  Asked  the  reason,  he  said  it  was 
because  they  were  driving  thoughts  into  his  brain.  Asked 
what  kind  of  thoughts,  he  said  they  were  words  like  (sugcre, 
futuere),  and  similar  disgusting  things.  Frequently  he  took 
his  handkerchief,  held  it  some  inches  from  his  mouth,  and 


196  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

spat  into  it.  He  said  that  when  they  drove  those  things  into 
his  brain  it  made  him  so  disgusted  that  he  had  to  spit. 
Once,  when  he  missed  his  handkerchief,  he  promptly  apolo- 
gized and  wiped  up  the  sputum,  showing  again  that  his  oppo- 
sition was  not  directed  toward  the  examiners.  At  another 
time  when  he  swore,  he  told  the  examiner  that  it  was  not 
meant  for  him,  but  for  the  thoughts.  In  one  remark  he 
seemed  to  vaguely  realize  the  dissociated  condition  of  his 
ideas.  He  mentioned  that  in  right-handed  people  the  left 
side  of  the  brain  has  to  do  with  certain  activities;  but  if  it 
gets  out  of  order,  the  other  side  of  the  brain  may  be  edu- 
cated to  perform  those  activities.  The  left  side  of  his  brain 
he  said  had  gone  to  pieces,  and  the  right  side  was  now  be- 
ginning to  take  up  the  functions  of  the  left.  But  the  left 
side  still  "  worked  some  " ;  with  the  result  that  the  two 
halves  of  his  brain  were  working  against  each  other  and 
getting  everything  "  all  balled  up." 

Case  F  has  already  offered  from  the  early  stages  of  his 
psychosis,  examples  of  a  slight  dissociation  (the  "mind- 
talk  "),  not  yet  externalized.  Later,  he  brings  out  other 
ideas  than  those  described  (pp.  636:),  and  these  he  ex- 
ternalizes. He  has  also  a  much  more  complicated  notion 
of  the  way  in  which  the  ideas  are  given  him,  than  the 
previous  cases  show.  He  is  apparently  a  sort  of  medium, 
which  any  other  mind  (the  "spirits")  may  enter,  and 
express  itself  through  him.  In  his  own  words: 

The  spirit  world  is  pretty  active.  .  .  .  My  life  is  appar- 
ently in  the  hands  of  others  the  way  I  am  situated  now,  and 
I  do  not  see  how  I  am  to  help  myself  any  way.  I  feel  as 
if  I  were  supporting  this  column  of  spirit  realm,  as  you 
might  say,  and  I  was  wondering  if  hundreds  of  other  spirits 
came  into  it,  if  I  could  stand  the  tension.  Anyone's  which 
comes  into  my  life  (may  enter)  ;  they  can  make  up  strange 
faces  and  cover  their  identity  in  that  way.  Anyone  may 
come  into  the  spiritual  world  under  certain  conditions.  Any 
spirit  that  enters  this  realm  can  gauge  the  clearness  and  dis- 
tinctness of  the  form;  they  can  make  themselves  plain,  or 
just  give  you  an  idea  of  what  they  are  doing.  .  .  .  How  all 
these  spirits  can  enter  my  person  is  a  wonderful  thing,  espe- 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  197 

dally  when  they  are  nowhere  near  one.  They  enter  my 
forehead  and  go  all  through  my  body.  The  spirits  show 
themselves  through  voices,  forms,  and  various  practices  ; 
they  are  very  clever  about  some  of  their  practices  and  cover 
them  up.  Now  I  am  sort  of  "  carrying  the  load  "  as  you 
might  say,  and  anyone  who  uses  this  spirit  realm  ought  to 
be  fair  enough  to  keep  out  of  my  sight  ;  I  don't  want  to  see 
all  this  business.  .  .  .  Another  thing,  these  people  are  total 
strangers  to  me,  and  if  this  business  is  going  to  keep  me 
from  engaging  in  remunerative  employment,  there  is  going 
to  be  some  remuneration,  because  I'm  not  running  a  free 
lunch  counter! 

In  our  previous  instances,  dissociated  ideas  have  been 
expressed  in  terms  of  thoughts  or  voices.  In  addition  to 
these,  we  find  F  now  speaking  of  forms  and  various  prac- 
tices, Evidence  has  been  given  that  the  distinction  be- 
tween the  dissociated  thoughts  and  voices  is  one  of  degree 
only.  So  long  as  a  dissociated  idea  seems  to  come  from 
within  the  person,  it  naturally  takes  the  form  of  a  thought. 
But,  if  it  is  regarded  as  coming  from  outside,  projected, 
externalized,  then  it  naturally  takes  the  form  of  a  voice, 
because  voices  are  the  most  vivid  way  in  which  ideas 
actually  come  to  us  from  without.  This  is  why  voices 
are  so  preeminent  a  feature  of  dementia  praecox.  De- 
mentia praecox  is  Par 


ated  ideas,!2  and  dissociated  ideas  regarded  as  coming 
from  the  outside  are  most  naturally  thought  of  as  voices. 
Once  projected,  the  idea  takes  on  linguistic  form,  and 
{hat  of  spoken  rather  than  written  language.  Case  F 
shows,  by  the  way,  a  rare  instance  of  written  language 
occurring  in  this  way,  for  he  says  elsewhere, 

She  can  flash  a  card  with  things  printed  on  it  ;  orders,  or 
whatever  she  wants  to  say.  At  things  I  read  I  have  taken 
off  my  hat  and  done  lots  of  things  to  carry  out  her  orders. 

42  Bleuler  has  given  it  the  more  descriptive  name  of  schizo* 
phrenia. 


198  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

In  the  dissociated  thoughts  and  voices  the  patient  is 
made  to  think  or  hear  of  some  idea  independently  of  his 
own  will.  The  "  forms  and  various  practices  "  go  be- 
yond the  stage  of  projected  ideas  which  have  only  a  lin- 
guistic expression.  Thus,  instead  of  merely  being  called 
a  "  vile  name,"  the  patient  hallucinates  the  performance 
upon  himself  of  the  action  the  name  implies.  Instead  of 
thoughts  or  voices,  he  has  the  hallucinatory  experience 
'  of  what  the  thoughts  and  voices  express.  Of  the  woman 
above-mentioned  he  says: 

She  transmits  smells,  like  Limburger  cheese.  Also  the 
smell  of  the  organs,  the  human  organs.  Well,  I  don't  know 
as  it  is  Limburger  cheese,  but  something  very  offensive ;  but 
then  I  can  do  the  same  thing  to  her  if  I  wanted  to.  (Later) 
Yesterday  there  was  a  peculiar  odor  that  was  transmitted, 
that  was  very  unpleasing.  It  was  a  very  musty  and  mouldy 
odor.  .  .  .  They  put  objects  in  front  of  me,  things  that  are 
displeasing.  I  think  that  ought  to  be  stopped.  (?)  Per- 
sonal matters.  (?)  Now  yesterday  afternoon  (he  de- 
scribes in  colloquial  terms  how  "  they  "  projected  before  him 
the  vision  of  the  erect  penis  of  another  patient,  continually 
endeavoring  to  place  it  in  his  mouth)  and  that  was  not  very 
pleasant.  Then  I  have  had  operations  flashed  in  front  of 
me,  but  they  did  me  the  favor  not  to  make  them  very  dis- 
tinct; they  could  make  them  pretty  plain  if  they  wanted  to, 
and  they  tried  to,  but  I  retaliated  by  giving  them  one  or  two 
occurrences  that  had  come  into  my  life. 

Few  words  could  express  better  than  these  the  division 
of  the  patient's  mind  against  itself.  Later  he  describes 
a  little  more  concretely  how  he  conceives  it. 

"  I'm  surrounded  by  a  field  of  diffuse  magnetism,  and  of 
course  when  a  person  enters  the  field,  whatever  he  pictures 
or  impresses  mentally  is  reflected  in  the  magnetic  field,  in 
volume  or  density  as  the  participant  wishes."  The  patient 
involved  in  the  incident  above  "  entered  his  spirit  or  form  in 
the  field  by  his  imagination  or  thoughts.  He  was  in  his  room 
really  and  it  was  a  good  joke  for  him.  ...  I  don't  want  my 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  199 

head  full  of  such  foul  stuff;  dirty  words,  thoughts  and 
actions.  I  can't  cut  this  power  off.  I  pray  night  and  day 
to  stop  being  a  sewer,  a  reservoir  of  indecent  thoughts,  words 
and  actions.  .  .  ." 

Thus  Case  F  exhibits  dissociated  ideas  appearing  as 
the  patient's  own  "  mind-talk,"  as  outside  voices  imposed 
upon  him,  and  as  hallucinatory  experiences  of  various 
kinds,  to  which  he  is  subjected.  He  shows  a  full  variety 
of  the  types  of  dissociation  that  ordinarily  take  place  with 
the  subject  aware  of  them  all  the  while.  He  shows  them 
merging  one  into  another.  Case  H,  which  follows7 
bridges  the  gap  between  this  dementia  praecox  type  of 
dissociation  and  the  dissociation  of  the  somnambulistic, 
multiple  personality  type.  The  essential  thingjn_the_de- 
mentja  praecpx  tyjpe  is  that  the  dissociation  js_  manifested 
within  the  awareness  of  the  main  personality.  It  hears 
the  "  voices,"  and  is  amused  or  annoyed  by  them.  The 
body  performs  this  or  that  impulsive  act,  without  the  in- 
tention, perhaps  against  the  intention,  of  the  main  per- 
sonality. Somnambulistic  dissociation  implies  a  longer 
and  more  complete  suspension  of  the  main  personality 
from  the  voluntary  control  of  the  organism.  This  volun- 
tary control  is  assumed  by  the  dissociated  state.  There 
should  also  be  an  amnesia  of  one  of  these  states  for  the 
other.  In  Case  H  which  follows  we  shall  see  combined 
the  dementia  praecox  and  somnambulistic  features.  In 
her,  another  mind  system  (somnambulistic)  takes  control 
of  the  body,  at  intervals,  and  operates  it  independently 
and  against  the  wishes  of  the  main  personality.  Yet  the 
main  personality  is  not  in  absolute  abeyance;  it  is  aware 
of  what  is  going  on  though  powerless  to  interfere  (de- 
mentia praecox). 

In    the    beginning,    Case    H    manifests    dissociated 


200  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

thoughts  and  voices  in  ways  now  familiar.     For  exam- 
ple, 

She  speaks  at  first  of  ideas  often  coming  to  her,  without 
externalization,  or  indeed,  so  far  as  this  expression  goes, 
abnormal  dissociation.  But  further,  "  Sometimes  it  seems 
as  though  the  voices  were  a  person,  and  again  a  voice  right 
in  my  form.  For  a  long  time  I  had  the  impression  that  it 
was  in  my  body,  but  now  I  feel  that  they  are  using  my  voice. 
...  It  is  not  in  my  mind ;  it  is  as  if  they  were  using  my 
tongue  and  lips."  At  first  the  voices  are  dissociated  from 
the  main  personality,  but  still  within  the  body;  later  pro- 
jected. For  laughing  without  reason,  "  O,  I  was  just  listen- 
ing to  the  voices."  She  cannot  (or  will  not)  always  remem- 
ber what  the  voices  say.  (C/.  p.  136.)  Among  other 
things  they  have  called  her  the  Mother  of  God,  Joan  of  Arc, 
Catherine  of  Siena ;  have  told  her  her  mother  and  sister  are 
dead,  though  she  knows  it  is  not  so.  The  voices  are  not 
always  the  same ;  sometimes  two  are  heard  contending  with 
one  another.  They  tell  her  to  do  various  things,  mostly  of 
some  inconvenience  to  herself,  such  as  sitting  with  her  back 
against  the  rods  of  the  bedstead,  or  refusing  to  take  a  bath 
though  she  wants  one.  "  The  voices  told  me  it  was  wrong 
to  lie  on  the  mat,  ...  so  I  got  up,  but  later  they  said  it 
was  all  right  so  I  did  lie  on  it."  She  speaks  of  a  "  conflict 
of  forces  "  in  her  mind :  "  One  seems  to  want  to  help  me 
get  out  of  the  hospital  .  .  .  and  the  other  does  not  want  me 
to  get  well."  "  The  voices  call  me  all  sorts  of  horrid  names, 
and  I  try  not  to  listen  to  them.  .  .  .  Let  me  listen !  Some- 
thing just  called  me  by  a  horrible  name."  She  had  been 
hearing  voices  of  father,  brother  and  other  people.  At  first 
they  were  pleasant,  later  said  she  was  Eve,  and  the  cause  of 
all  the  sensuality  in  the  world.  ..."  I  can  hear  those  voices 
tempting  me  to  do  wrong,  and  I  try  so  hard  not  to  listen 
to  them.  ...  I  do  so  want  to  be  a  pure  woman  and  live  a 
pure  life." 

In  the  subsequent  stages  of  her  illness,  she  describes 
herself  as  taken  possession  of  by  another  state,  which  she 
calls  the  automatic.  We  have  no  introspective  record  of 
the  automatic's  mental  processes,  but  its  behavior  was 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  201 

such  that  it  could  evidently  carry  out  purposive  actions. 
It  represented  an  extremely  irritable  mood,  not  accessible 
to  introspective  analysis. 

The  first  sign  of  this  dissociation  of  voluntary  control 
is  from  an  early  period  of  the  illness,  going  much  further 
back  than  any  record  of  the  automatic.  Speaking  in  a 
rather  high  tone,  she  says : 

"  This  is  not  my  natural  voice ;  it  is  a  white  sisterhood 
woman  controlling  me ;  that  is  one  way  they  speak  to  me,  by 
controlling  my  tongue  as  they  control  mediums." 

She  gave  her  first  account  of  the  automatic  expressions 
in  explaining  some  outbursts  of  irritability.  "  It  is  not  I 
who  do  these  things,  it  is  the  automatic."  ...  It  was  as  if 
someone  else  took  possession  of  her ;  when  she  struck  any- 
one, it  was  like  the  automatic  striking  out  with  a  wooden 
arm.  She  was  conscious  of  it  like  a  looker-on.  She  knew 
what  was  done,  saw  what  was  done,  but  could  not  appreciate 
that  she  was  doing  it,  nor  the  import  of  it.  "  It  is  as  if  I 
was  half  conscious."  She  denies  that  it  is  due  to  influence 
(externalized),  says  it  is  simply  the  automatic  working 
through  her ;  and  in  regard  to  abusive  talk,  "  that  is  not  I,  it 
is  the  automatic  talking."  She  apologizes  for  her  behavior, 
saying  she  had  nothing  to  do  with  it ;  it  was  the  automatic 
which  controlled  her.  (The  actions  of  the  automatic  are 
actually  quite  contrary  to  her  character  before  illness,  or  her 
main  personality  in  the  psychosis.) 

In  describing  the  relations  between  the  main  personality 
and  the  automatic,  she  says  it  is  as  if  she  were  outside,  far 
away,  looking  at  the  automatic.  She  remembers  thoroughly 
what  the  automatic  does.  On  the  other  hand,  she  says 
(voluntarily)  that  the  automatic  docs  not  know  H  (herself), 
and  has  no  memory  or  connection  with  H.  This  really 
means  that  H's  main  personality,  while  it  can  watch  the 
automatic  at  work,  has  no  knowledge  of  the  automatic's 
mental  processes ;  the  "  automatic "  actions  indicate  that 
it  may  have  some  connection  with  her,  though  one  of  opposi- 
tion. For  example,  she  wrote  little  sayings,  and  put  them 
where  she  could  see  them  to  help  her  control  herself  when 
the  automatic  comes.  The  automatic  came  and  tore  them 
all  up,  also  some  dress-patterns  which  she  especially  wanted. 


202  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

She  wants  to  be  nice  to  people,  and  the  automatic  attacks 
them,  even  her  own  husband. 

In  addition  to  the  voluntary  movements  concerned  in 
these  actions,  the  automatic  has  the  use  of  language.  It 
is  apparent  that  the  automatic  retains  some  memories 
acquired  by  H,  but  how  much  cannot  be  said  with  cer- 
tainty. We  cannot  be  sure  that  the  automatic  destroyed 
the  dress-patterns  or  attacked  the  husband,  particularly 
because  H  desired  otherwise.  The  automatic  is  too  uni- 
versally destructive  and  abusive  for  this.  The  mental 
level  of  the  automatic  is  rather  that  of  the  somnambu- 
listic than  of  the  full-fledged  alternating  personality. 
But  in  addition  to  the  dissociated  system  which  makes 
up  the  automatic,  a  shred  of  the  main  personality  per- 
sists all  the  while,  noting  what  is  going  on.  The  disso- 
ciation is  an  unusual  combination  of  somnambulistic  with 
"  schizophrenic  "  features.43  As  Felida  links  the  alter- 
nating personalities  to  the  manic-depressive  conditions 
(p.  183),  so  does  H  show  their  continuity  with  dementia 
praecox. 

In  sum,  the  sixth  type  of  dissociation  (trends  not  inte- 
grated with  the  main  personality,  though  the  main  per- 
sonality is  aware  of  them)  is  shown  by  the  above  cases  in 
the  following  forms: 

a.  Case  F.     His  mind  talks  to  him ;  does  not  have  tone 
quality. 

b.  Case  L.     "  Dictates  "  to  perform  certain  actions ;  not 
supposed  to  come  from  outside. 

c.  Case  L.     Projection  of  ideas  in  accord  with  the  main 
personality,  hearing  them  reflected  in  the  speech  of  other 
persons. 

43  A  remarkable  account  of  simultaneous  dissociations  has  just 
appeared  in  W.  F.  Prince's  "  The  Doris  Case  of  Quintuple  Per- 
sonality," Journ.  Abn.  Psychol.,  H  (1916),  73-122. 


TYPES  OF  DISSOCIATION  203 

d.  Case  M.     Hears  voices  of  familiar  people  saying  pleas- 
ant or  indifferent  things.     Annoying  at  times. 

e.  Case  N.     Dissociated  ideas  referred  to  the  "  Divine 
Mind  " ;  at  first  as  thoughts,  later  apparently  as  heard  words. 

/.  Case  A.  Sometimes  attributes  ideas  to  other  persons 
who  are  named,  sometimes  recognizes  them  as  within  her- 
self, but  not  in  the  main  personality.  More  emphasis  on 
pleasant  features. 

g.  Case  D.  (Graves'  Disease.)  Voices  of  acquaint- 
ances ;  as  she  recovers,  lose  their  tone  quality,  and  come  sim- 
ply as  thoughts.  Illustrates  varying  degrees  of  insight.  In 
a  later  attack,  the  dissociated  trends  take  on  a  sexual  char- 
acter. 

h.  Case  B.  Auditory  hallucinations,  referred  to  known 
persons.  Funny,  indifferent  and  abusive. 

i.  Case  C.  Thoughts  and  voices  independent  of  volition ; 
at  first  not  externalized,  later  externalized ;  then  referred  to 
definite  persons.  Funny,  indifferent  and  abusive  in  con- 
tent. 

;'.  Case  J.  Repulsive  ideas  of  a  sexual  nature,  not  clearly 
projected. 

k.  Case  F.  Various  hallucinatory  sights,  smells,  voices, 
predominantly  sexual.  Externalized  in  a  mystical  way. 

/.  Case  H.  Dissociated  ideas,  gradually  externalized  as 
voices.  Pleasant  and  unpleasant,  later  insulting.  At  times 
the  main  personality  is  displaced  by  secondary  state  (the 
automatic)  ;  the  main  personality  at  these  times  is  dimly 
aware  of  what  the  automatic  is  doing. 

Upon  the  basis  of  the  principles  thus  illustrated  and 
of  the  realistic  details  which  the  cases  present,  we  may 
proceed  to  a  study  of  the  manner  and  mechanism  of  dis- 
sociation of  trends  and  ideas,  and  of  the  role  of  dissoci- 
ation in  the  formation  of  delusions. 


CHAPTER  VI 

MECHANISMS   IN   DISSOCIATED   IDEAS 

IT  is  natural  to  ask  such  patients  as  we  have  been  de- 
scribing, why  they  feel  certain  ideas  or  actions  to  be  not 
their  own;  how  the  patients  know  this  to  be  the  case. 
They  reply  that  the  ideas  are  intruded,  .not  connected 
with  the  central  train  of  thought;  that  they  are  of  things 
without  personal  interest;  that  they  are  of  things  re- 
pulsive; and  that  the  actions  are  opposed  to  natural  in- 
clinations. For  these  reasons,  they  appear  to  be  foreign. 
This  is  as  far  as  the  patients'  introspection  goes.  In  ad- 
dition to  being  dissociated  (not  recognized  as  part  of 
the  main  personality),  the  trends  may  be  projected,  ex- 
ternalized (referred  to  an  outside  source).  This  ex- 
ternalization  seems  to  come  with  the  further  develop- 
ment of  the  psychosis,  and  to  disappear  as  the  psychosis 
improves.  (Case  D.)  Repulsive  ideas  are  most  uni- 
formly referred  to  a  source  outside  the  main  personality. 
They  have  a  special  motive  for  being  projected,  as  the 
main  personality  is  ashamed  of  them.1  But  the  repul- 
siveness  is  not  a  necessary  motive  for  projection,  since 
\ve  have  examples  of  indifferent  and  humorous  ideas  also 
externalized. 

Some  kinds  of  dissociations  occur  in  which  physical 
causes  are  clear.  A  blow  on  the  head  may  occasion  a 

1  In  paraphrase  of  Nietzsche,  "  Thus  I  think,"  says  my  con- 
sciousness ;  "  I  cannot  be  thinking  thus,"  says  my  self-love  and  will 
not  be  denied.  And  at  last,  consciousness  yields. 

204 


MECHANISMS  IN  DISSOCIATED  IDEAS      305 

loss  of  memories  for  events  immediately  surrounding  the 
blow.  Diseases  of  the  brain-substance  bring  about 
losses  or  disturbances  of  its  activity,  according  to  the 
part  of  the  brain  in  which  the  disease  is  located.  Many 
very  interesting  disturbances  of  speech,  included  in  the 
term  aphasia,  are  brought  about  in  this  way.  In  the 
minuteness  and  delicacy  with  which  special  functions  are 
dissociated,  aphasia  yields  but  little  to  the  kinds  of  disso- 
ciation already  considered  (pp.  157-161).  The  extreme 
of  simultaneous  dissociations  -  with  one  side  of  the  body 
normal  and  the  other  side  apractic  or  delirious  — seems  to 
have  arisen  under  organic  brain  disease.2  The  dissoci- 
ations considered  in  this  and  the  previous  chapter  are 
not  similarly  related  to  organic  brain-disturbances.  In- 
deed, it  is  difficult  to  relate  them  to  any  traceable  brain- 
changes  at  all. 

Yet,  there  is  some  similarity  in  the  dissociations  trace- 
able to  organic  sources,  and  those  not  so  traceable.  A 
person  may  have  an  organic  paralysis  or  a  hysterical 
paralysis,  an  organic  anesthesia  or  a  hysterical  anesthesia, 
an  organic  amnesia  or  a  hysterical  amnesia.  One  ground ^ 
of  distinction  lies  in  the  readiness  with  which  the  lost 
functions  may  be  demonstrated  in  the  unconscious.  If  a  , 

X 

blind  person  avoids  obstacles  suddenly  put  before  him; 
if  a  person  whose  eye  muscles  are  paralyzed  suddenly 
looks  to  one  side  at  an  unexpected  object;  if  a  lost  mem- 
ory can  be  recovered  in  automatic  writing,  such  a  disso- 
ciation is  functional.  Such  dissociations  are  not  accom- 
panied by  gross  changes  in  the  brain.  A  trend  dissoci- 
ated by  destruction  of  brain-tissue  cannot  so  well  be  re- 
covered in  the  unconscious.  A  man  whose  optic  centers 

-  Liepmann,  Bleuler,  ref.  A.  Meyer,  Psych.  Bui.  I   (1904),  277- 
286. 


306  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

are  gone  will  not  avoid,  or  turn  to  look  at,  the  unexpected 
object. 

Another  ground  of  distinction  between  the  "  organic  " 
and  "  functional  "  dissociations  may  be  expressed  as  fol- 
lows. Organic  dissociation  depends  more  on  the  thor- 
oughness of  learning,  of  "  impression  "  or  Einpr'dgung 
as  the  Germans  call  it.  What  is  least  well  learned  is 
easiest  dissociated.  Recent  memories  go  before  old  ones. 
The  case  of  aphasia  almost  always  retains  a  few  common 
words.  That  is,  in  organic  disorders,  what  is  dissociated 
depends  first  on  the  portions  of  the  brain  disordered,  and 
then  on  the  firmness  with  which  the  trends  thus  affected 
have  been  grounded  in  memory.  It  has  long  been  felt 
that  functional  dissociations  do  not  follow  any  such  rule, 
and  are  not  to  be  interpreted  by  any  such  principle.  What 
trends  are  dissociated  functionally  depends  more  upon 
their  special  meaning  to  the  individual,  and  their  relation 
to  other  trends  in  the  personality,  that  is,  upon  their  func- 
tional value  for  the  personality. 

As  was  brought  out  in  the  second  chapter,  all  our  be- 
havior, bodily  and  mental,  is  the  sum  of  certain  trends 
of  conduct.  Upon  three  fundamental  trends  —  hunger, 
race-preservation,  self-preservation  against  enemies  — 
nearly  every  one  is  agreed.  Additional  trends  are  classi- 
fied differently  by  different  investigators.  Chapter  II 
considered  the  various  ways  in  which  these  trends  cross 
and  interfere  with  one  another.  On  page  39  we  spoke 
of  recurring  to  the  mental  manifestations  of  conflicting 
trends.  Dissociation  is  among  the  most  important  of 
these.  D  isolation  Jftro^  trend 

opposed  to  ajioihes- -trend- or  -system  of  trends  is  mani- 
fested independently  of  them.  Trends  dissociated  from 
theTmairf  personality  are  often  and  obviously  trends  with 


MECHANISMS  IN  DISSOCIATED  IDEAS     207 

which  the  main  personality  is  in  conflict.  To  give  the 
most  striking  instance,  the  sexual  trends  are  in  strong 
conflict  with  the  main  personality  in  many  women,  who 
are  taught  that  it  is  wicked  to  have  thoughts  of  them. 
Being  thus  in  conflict  with  the  main  personality,  the 
sexual  trends  are  most  readily  dissociated  from  it.  Then  ^ 
the  "  voices  "  tell  the  woman  that  she  is  "  bad." 

It  is  through  this  incompatibility  of  the  sexual  trend 
with  other  trends  of  the  main  personality,  that  the  sexual 
trend  is  so  liable  to  dissociation  from  it,  while  other 
trends  are  retained  in  it.  The  central  idea  is,  that  a 
dissociative  process  strikes  upon  trends  which  are  or 
represent 3  trends  which  were  incompatible  with  other 
trends  more  closely  knit  with  the  main  personality.  They 
were  more  easily  dissociated  from  the  main  personality 
by  reason  of  this  special  incompatibility,  or  conflict. 

For  the  present,  it  is  "  conceptual  license  "  to  suppose  ! 
that  all  dissociation  of  trends  is  a  manifestation  of  con-  ' 
flict  in  trends.  The  most  to  be  attempted  here  is  to 
illustrate  how  conflict  manifests  itself  in  some  typical 
examples  of  dissociation.  In  the  state  of  our  knowledge 
there  should  be  no  thought  of  demonstrating,  in  every 
case,  what  conflict  is  behind  the  dissociation.  We  have 
described  the  different  forms  which  the  dissociations  take. 
The  systematic  anesthesias,  paralyses,  amnesias,  fugues 
and  multiple.. personalities,  are  hysterical  forms  of  disso- 
ciation. Schizophrenic  (dementia  praecox)  forms  of 
dissociation  are  the  thoughts,  voices  and  other  hallucina- 
tions or  controlled  movements  that  occur  within  the 
awareness  of  the  main  personality,  but  are  not  recog- 
nized as  a  part  of  it.  In  the  hysterical  dissociations,  the 
dissociated  trends  become  part  of  the  unconscious.  They 

8  "  Dissociative  Symbolism,"  218. 


208  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

are  demonstrable  there  by  automatic  writing,  etc.  By 
analogy,  the  dissociated  trends  of  dementia  praecox  are 
sometimes  spoken  of  as  "  manifestations  of  the  patient's 
unconscious,"  although,  of  course,  the  patient  is  aware  of 
them.  We  shall  deal  chiefly  with  the  dementia  praecox 
types  of  dissociation. 

"  When  that  which  is  inhibited  is  a  sentiment  pos- 
sessing an  intense  emotion,  the  sentiment  tends  to  bee 
come  dissociated  from  the  personal  consciousness,  and 
free  to  become  by  the  force  of  its  own  emotional  dispo- 
sitions a  sub (un) conscious  process."  4  In  these  words 
Prince  brings  out  the  main  factors  in  dissociation  by 
conflict.  Intense  conflicts  arise  about  trends  which  are 
at  once  strong  and  blocked ;  and  the  trend  which  is  suffi- 
ciently strong  and  sufficiently  blocked  is  split  off,  dissoci- 
ated. 

As  we  saw  in  Chapter  II,  the  greatest  conflicts  (we 
speak  now  only  of  internal  ones),  center  about  the  sexual 
trends.  Since  they  are  the  most  conflicting,  and  perhaps 
also  because  the  situation  they  seek  to  realize  is  more 
definite  than  in  other  trends,  we  find  that  they  are  espe- 
cially subject  to,  and  give  the  best  illustrations  of,  such 
dissociation  from  the  main  personality. 

The  case-material  above  cited  does  not  show  the  real 
frequency  with  which  sexual  trends  are  expressed  in  dis- 
sociation. To  investigate  this  more  fully,  a  hundred 
consecutive  cases  of  dementia  praecox 5  were  studied. 
The  cases  in  which  sexual  trends  were  directly  expressed 
were  put  into  a  few  natural  groupings.  In  many  cases 
no  sexual  trends  were  directly  expressed.  In  these,  the 
dominant  form  in  which  the  trends  appeared,  was  noted. 

*  Unc.,  488.     (Italics  author's.) 

6  Manhattan  State  Hospital  material ;  kindly  furnished  me  by 
Dr.  G.  H.  Kirby. 


MECHANISMS  IN  DISSOCIATED  IDEAS     209 

MEN  WOMEN 

Hallucinated    or    delusional  Hallucinated  sexual  approach      6 

response  in  opposite  sex  5      Delusional  desire  from  male 

Hallucinated  calling  of  "  vile  sex  4 

names "      (not     necessarily  Dissociated   ideas  of   sexual 

specified)  6      nature     (calling    "bad    wo- 

Other  delusional  or  autoch-  man")     and    the    like,    not 

thonous  ideas  of  sexual  col-  necessarily  specified,  12 

or  ing    (e.g.,  performance  of  Delusions    of    infidelity    of 

cunnilingus,    or    unspecified  husband  4 

"  sexual   hallucinations "  9      Other   ideas   of   sexual   col- 

oring  (e.g.,  to  he  put  in  a 
disorderly    house,    sex    or- 
gans worked  upon  with  elec- 
trical machines)  9 
Patients  directly  expressing 

sexual  trends  20  35 

Religious  trends  4  4 

Persecutory  trends  12  5 

Economic  trends  I  I 

Trends,    if    present,    not 

elicited  12  6 

Patients  without  expression 

of  sexual  trends  29  16 

In  these  cases,  twice  as  many  men  as  women  give  no 
expression  to  trends,  and  are  inaccessible  —  a  sex  differ- 
ence that  is  not  confined  to  dementia  praecox.  Another 
such  difference  may  be  reflected  in  that  persecutor}'  trends 
are  also  twice  as  frequent  in  the  men  as  in  the  women. 
Women  generally  endure  more,  without  feeling  perse- 
cuted, than  men.  The  small  part  played  by  economic 
trends  (ideas  of  great  wealth,  etc.)  is  striking.  Manic- 
depressive  or  general  paralytic  cases  would  hardly  show 
this.  On  the  other  hand,  where  sexual  trends  are  di- 
rectly expressed,  they  are  not  far  from  twice  as  frequent 
in  the  women.  This  difference  is  the  natural  effect  of 
dissociation  through  conflict.  It  is  difficult  to  say 
whether  sexual  trends  are  stronger  in  women  or  men. 
But  there  jean  be  n.Q_cn4estiQn_  that,  in  proportion  to  their 
strength,  sexual  trends^are  far  more  blocked  in  women. 
The  sex  tabu  is  far  heavier  upon  them.  Their  sex  con- 


310  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

Uicts  are  far  stronger,  and  this  is  expressed  in  the  greater 
prominence  of  the  dissociation  of  these  trends  in  dementia 
praecox. 

The  specific  role  of  blocking  is  well  shown  by  a  sex- 
difference  in  the  content  of  these  trends.  In  normal 
life,  women  have  great  resistances  toward  giving  them- 
selves to  men,  while  men  have  comparatively  few  sub- 
jective resistances  toward  possessing  themselves  of 
women.  In  the  material  quoted  above,  there  is  no  case 
of  a  man's  hallucinating  the  possession  of  a  woman.  In- 
deed, only  one  instance  is  recalled  by  the  writer,  in  which 
the  man  hallucinates  normal  sexual  intercourse.  Men 
dream  of  it,  fancy  it,  often  enough,  but  it  is  not  disso- 
ciated from  the  main  personality.  That  is,  the  trend  of 
sexual  intercourse,  not  being  in  great  conflict  with  the 
main  personality  of  men,  does  not  readily  become  disso- 
ciated from  the  main  personality. 

"  The  voices,"  with  which  women  so  generally  accuse 
themselves  of  being  "  bad,"  do  not  accuse  men  of  illicit 
relations  with  women.  That  idea  is  not  in  deep  conflict 
with  the  main  personality  of  men.  Where  the  woman  is 
called  "  bad,"  the  man  hears  himself  instead  called  by 
an  unprintable  name  which  designates  the  part  played  by 
Case  F  in  the  incident  between  him  and  another  patient. 
(p.  198.  Cf.  also  Case  J.)  The  dissociation  does  not 
in  men  strike  the  normal  heterosexual  trends,  because  the 
main  personality  of  men  is  little  in  conflict  with  them. 
Instead,  it  brings  to  light  a  homosexual  trend,  toward 
which  the  normal  man  feels  tremendous  resistance. 

In  women,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  the  normal  hetero- 
sexual trend  which  is  dissociated,  for  it  is  almost  as  much 
blocked  in  women  as  homosexuality  is  in  the  normal  man. 
In  six  of  the  above  cases,  women  hallucinate  the  sexual 


MECHANISMS  IN  DISSOCIATED  IDEAS      ill 

approach  of  men,  in  either  attempted  or  accomplished  in- 
tercourse. There  is  nothing  corresponding  to  this  among 
the  men.  With  them,  the  trend  limits  itself  more  to  the 
idea  of  some  woman  being  secretly  in  love  with  the 
patient. 

While  the  above  is  said  of  dementia  praecox,  it  may  be 
mentioned  that  the  same  thing  is  observed  in  alcoholic 
hallucinoses.  There  too,  the  hallucinations  accuse  women 
of  being  "  bad,"  and  men  of  fellatio,  "  though  here  is  a 
more  general  setting  of  hallucinated  opprobrium." 
(August  Hoch.) 

We  have  amply  seen  how  conflicting  trends  dissoci- 
ated from  the  main  personality  manifest  themselves  to 
it  in  the  form  of  voices  and  other  hallucinations.  The 
main  personality  perceives  these,  without  accepting  them 
as  a  part  of  itself.  The  delusion,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
a  false  idea  which  is  accepted  by  the  main  personality. 
A  pertinent  question  in  regard  to  delusions  suggests 
itself :  Why,  so  long  as  the  main  personality  cuts  loose 
from  reality,  does  it  not  cut  loose  in  directions  which  are 
agreeable  to  it?  This  is  notoriously  not  the  case.  The 
majority  of  delusions  are  not  pleasant  but  disagreeable  < 
fp  fh<»  main,  pprsntiality.  Clearly,  though  they  are  ac- 
cepted as  part  of  the  main  personality,  their  content  is 
not  determined  according  to  the  trends  of  the  main  per- 
sonality. It  is  determined  by  trends  which  lie  outside 
the  personal  consciousness. 

Sometimes  we  are  fortunate  enough  to  get  the  same 
trend  expressed  not  only  as  a  delusion  in  the  main  per- 
sonality, but  in  its  dissociated  form  as  hallucination. 
This  is  the  case  among  delusions  of  marital  infidelity, 
such  as  are  mentioned  above.  The  relation  of  the  two 
is  instructive.  A  woman,  in  the  main  personality,  is 


MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

jealous  of  her  husband;  in  her  dissociations,  she  hears 
the  voices  of  men  planning  to  ruin  her  own  virtue;  a 
man  came  to  her  bed  at  night  and  tried  to  assault  her.  In 
another  woman,  the  main  personality  harbors  the  delusion 
that  the  husband  is  unfaithful;  in  her  hallucinations, 
people  say  that  she  herself  is  a  prostitute.  Another 
woman  is  told  by  the  Virgin  Mary  that  her  husband  is 
unfaithful;  per  contra,  people  try  to  make  her  fall  in 
love  with  some  one  else.  Another  has  delusions  of  mar- 
ital infidelity  with  persecution.  She  has  hallucinations 
of  snakes  put  in  her  own  and  her  children's  mouths.  Ob- 
serve that  the  accepted  and  repudiated  ideas  have  a  com- 
plementary relationship  in  each  case.  Each  trend  is  an 
expression  of  sexual  maladjustment,  with  an  attempt  to 
solve  it.  In  the  trends  accepted  by  the  main  personality 
(delusions  and  the  friendly  voice),  the  solution  is  an 
orthodox  getting  rid  of  the  husband  through  his  unfaith- 
fulness. In  this  delusion,  the  trend  is  thus  modified  into 
a  form  that  the  main  personality  will  accept.  In  the 
trends  repudiated  by  the  main  personality  (hallucina- 
tions), illicit  satisfactions  are  provided  for  the  patient 
herself. 

From  hysteria  comes  the  "  nervous  pregnancy  "  6  in 
which  dissociated  symptoms  of  pregnancy  appear  in 
women  desiring  a  child.  Here  the  conflict  is  with  reality ; 
the  trend  desiring  a  child  splits  off  and  behaves  as  though 
the  child  were  there.  The  "  betrothal  delirium  "  is  cited 
by  Hart  in  this  same  connection.  This  is  a  dissoci- 
ated state  developing  in  women  whose  lovers  have  left 
them.  The  desires  are  imagined,  or  hallucinated,  as  ful- 
filled. 

An  important  part  played  by  dissociation  in  making 

•  Maj.  Sympt.,  263. 


MECHANISMS  IN  DISSOCIATED  IDEAS     213 

such  delusions  possible  is  well  expressed  in  these  words 
of  Janet : 

It  is  precisely  because  the  subjects  have  forgotten  every- 
thing, because  they  are  no  longer  restrained  by  any  sensa- 
tion, by  any  thought  relative  to  the  reality  that  surrounds 
them,  that  they  allow  the  ideas  suggested  to  them  to  develop 
freely.  When  they  express  some  idea,  their  conviction  is 
childish.  It  seems  very  strong  because  it  rests  on  astonish- 
ing ignorance.  Objections,  impossibilities,  contradictions, 
do  not  reach  their  minds  in  the  least. 

This  forgetting,  or  ignorance,  under  which  the  de- 
lusion is  possible,  is  a  dissociation  of  the  ideas  that  would 
correct  it.  It  is  through  such  dissociation  that  delusional 
trends  are  not  subject  to  any  correction  from  the  world  of 
experience.  Delusions  are  mental  trends  that  purfipe  I 
their  course  independently  of  real  surrounfonfis,.  in  the  I 
same  sense  that  our  breathing  pursqes,  its  course  incfe-f 
pendently  of  what  WP  rp^l  .  Jn^t  as,  in  our  first  illustra- 
tions, the  signing  of  the  letters  conflicts  with  the  pursuit 
of  the  mathematical  problem,  so  the  belief  that  one  is 
Julius  Caesar  conflicts  with  maintaining  the  most  ele- 
mentary relations  with  one's  actual  surroundings. 
Therefore,  in  normal  individuals,  the  belief  that  one  is 
Julius  Caesar  does  not  arise.  Only  through  the  suspen- 
sion of  that  logical  conflict  (the  conflicting  elements  dis- 
sociated from  each  other)  can  the  belief  in  being  Julius 
Caesar  or  what  not  arise.  Delusional  trends  are  kept] 
from  developing  through  their  "  integration  "  with  otherj 
mental  trends  that  correct  them.  If  normal  integratior 
breaks  down,  the  trends  develop  uncorrected.  If  it  is  thi< 
special  integration  with  corrective  trends  that  break* 
down,  there  comes  a  delusion.  Our  patient  then  says, 
"  I  am  Julius  Caesar."  If  the  dissociation  is  from  the 
main  personality,  it  results  in  a  mind  talk,  "  My  thoughts 


214,  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

tell  me  I  am  Julius  Caesar."  It  may  then  be  integrated 
with  the  corrective  trends  ("  but  I  know  I  am  not  so"). 
If  the  dissociation  is  from  the  individual  altogether,  the 
trend  comes  as  a  voice:  "  Christ  says  I  am  Julius 
Caesar."  (Cf.  Case  J.)  If  the  distinction  between 
image  and  reality  breaks  down,  hallucinatory  experience 
results :  "  On  the  Lupercal  Mark  Antony  thrice  offered 
me  a  kingly  crown."  This  shows  how  the  delusion  is 
related  to  other  kinds  of  dissociation.  It  is  according  to 
what  is  dissociated  from  the  trend,  whether  it  becomes  a 
delusion,  mind-talk,  or  hallucination. 

To  the  casual  observer,  a  striking  feature  of  mental 
disease  is  that  patients  express  false  ideas  without  acting 
upon  them  in  any  way.  A  man  who  believes  himself 
king  of  the  world  still  accepts  the  feeding-chair  for  a 
throne,  and  the  floor-polisher  for  a  scepter.  Such  patients 
are  said  not  to  react  to  their  delusions,  because  they  do 
not  behave  in  ways  consistent  with  them.  ("  Faith  with- 
out works.")  The  man  who  has  the  wealth  of  the 
world  begs  for  a  trifle.7  Such  delusions  are  trends  quite 
isolated  from  the  rest  of  the  personality.  They  are  dis- 
sociated not  only  from  the  rationally  corrective  trends, 
but  from  all  other  trends  determining  the  patient's  con- 
duct. They  are  integrated  only  with  the  "  warmth  and 
intimacy"  which  makes  them  still  part  of  the  personal 
consciousness.  The  patient  presents  the  simple,  unelabor- 
ated  belief:  I  am  king  of  the  world.  That  is  all.  It  is 
dissociated  from  everything  else  in  the  individuality.8 

7  Hart,  "  Psychology  of  Insanity,"  55-57- 

8  A  person  may  have  an  experience,  realize  that  the  experience  has 
happened  to  some  one,  but  not  that  it  has  happened  to  himself.    Cf. 
James,   "  Principles,"   I,   footnote,   273-274.    Also   "  David   Copper- 
field,"  closing  pages  of  Ch.  24.    This  would  represent  a  dissociation 
of  the  "  warmth  and  intimacy,"  at  least  from  the  immediate  situation, 
and  probably  from  much  else  in  the  personality. 


MECHANISMS  IN  DISSOCIATED  IDEAS     215 

In  both  normal  and  pathological  thinking,  ideas  which 
are  contradictory  usually  correct  or  exclude  one  another. 
It  is  as  impossible  for  a  thing  to  "  both  be  and  not  be  "h 
as  it  is  for  James's  philosopher  and  lady-killer  to  "  keep 
house  in  the  same  tenement  of  clay."  If  correct  (Keller's 
verifiable}  ideas  are  retained  the  result  is  what  we  have 
called  logical  or  realistic  thinking.  A  delusion  results,  as 
we  have  seen,  when  corrective  ideas  are  dissociated. 
That  is  a  form  of  "  autistic  "  mental  activity.  But  au- 
tistic  thinking  often  shows  a  dissociation  of  such  conflict- 
ing ideas  from  one  another  only.  In  such  a  case  the  con- 
flicting ideas  persist  side  by  side  in  the  main  personality, 
each  unmodified  by  its  logical  inconsistency  with  the 
other.  Frazer  tells  of  astronomers  who  can  predict 
eclipses,  and  who  yet  believe  that  eclipses  are  caused  by 
a  dragon  swallowing  the  sun.  "  Unless,"  he  goes  on, 
"  we  allow  for  this  innate  capacity  of  the  human  mind 
to  entertain  contradictory  beliefs  at  the  same  time,  we 
shall  in  vain  attempt  to  understand  the  history  of  thought 
in  general,  and  of  religion  in  particular."  The  knowl- 
edge that  predicts  eclipses  is  dissociated  from  the  belief 
in  the  dragon,  so  that  neither  influences  the  other.  Re- 
ligion can  establish  close  contact  of  such  conflicting  ideas, 
without  any  logical  interaction  : 

He  that  foresees  and  foredecrees 
In  wisdom  ordered  has 
That  man's  free-will,  electing  ill, 
Shall  bring  His  will  to  pass.8 

Even  though  there  is  some  notion  of  their  conflict, 
each  idea  may  be  held  so  strongly  that  neither  can  be 
given  up.  The  doctrine  of  the  Virgin  Birth  furnishes  a 
prominent  example :  "  Joseph  and  Mary  were  married, 

» "The  Day  of  Doom"  (1661). 


216  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

/ 

but  the  marriage  was  never  consummated.  Yet  it  was 
a  true  marriage  and  Mary  became  a  mother,  but  Joseph 
was  not  the  father.  Mary  was  a  Virgin  nevertheless."  10 
The  Athanasian  Creed  brings  the  following: 

.  .  .  Neither  confounding  the  Persons:  nor  dividing  the 
Substance.  For  there  is  one  Person  of  the  Father,  another 
of  the  Son,  and  another  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  ...  So  the 
Father  is  God,  the  Son  is  God :  and  the  Holy  Ghost  is  God. 
And  yet  there  are  not  three  Gods :  but  one  God.  .  .  .  The 
Father  is  made  of  none :  neither  created,  nor  begotten.  The 
Son  is  of  the  Father  alone:  not  made,  nor  created,  but 
begotten.  The  Holy  Ghost  is  of  the  Father  and  of  the  Son : 
neither  made,  nor  created,  nor  begotten,  but  proceeding 
.  .  .  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  is  God  and 
Man ;  God,  of  the  Substance  of  the  Father,  begotten  before 
the  worlds :  and  Man,  of  the  Substance  of  his  Mother,  born 
in  this  world ;  .  .  . 

Viewed  genetically,  the  lines  from  the  "  Day  of 
Doom  "  represent  a  primary  stage  of  complete  dissoci- 
ation of  the  conflicting  ideas.  In  the  instances  of  the 
Trinity  and  the  Virgin  Birth,  the  difficulty  is  appreciated. 
Logical  integration  has  commenced.  The  ideas  conflict- 
ing with  the  prevalent  notions  had  been  dissociated,  but 
are  now  beginning  to  assert  themselves.  The  two  con- 
flicting trends  of  thought  are  maintained  through  special 
rationalizing. 

The  following  dementia  praecox  Case  R  remarks  of 
two  conflicting  statements: 

Both  of  those  things  are  true  and  bot'.i  are  lies,  you  can 
put  them  both  down.  (Can  a  thing  be  both  a  truth  and  a 
lie?)  Yes  .  .  .  (On  another  topic.)  Loads  of  people  who 
are  interested  in  me  and  loved  me  ...  I  am  interested  in  all 
and  love  all — (then,  with  a  sneer)  I  don't  love  all  —  by 
any  means. 

10  Sumner,  "  Folkways,"  401-402. 


MECHANISMS  IN  DISSOCIATED  IDEAS     817 

Before  leaving  the  topic  of  the  dissociated  existence 
of  conflicting  trends,  attention  should  be  called  to  some 
cases  in  whichjijiissociated  trendjsjvejy  dirpctly_opjx)sed 
by  the  counter-trends.  A  patient  hears  voices  telling  her 
to  get  married ;  she  answers  them  that  she  does  not  wish 
to.  This  interaction  is  between  trends  of  the  main  per- 
sonality and  a  trpnd  of  t^p  "  nnrnr^rintis "  Different 
trends  may  also  interfere  with  one  another,  without  their 
relations  to  the  main  personality  being  clearly  different. 
Prince  gives  an  amusing  example  of  this.11  A  patient's 
right  hand  is  engaged  in  automatic  writing.  The  left 
hand  observes  what  the  right  hand  is  doing,  and  objects 
to  it ;  seizes  the  pencil  and  hurls  it  across  the  room  —  all 
without  the  main  personality's  being  any  the  wiser. 

The  mental  processes  in  the  Lusitania-cap  dream  (p. 
120)  show  the  same  thing.  The  dreamer  greatly  de- 
sires his  cap,  that  he  may  leave  the  sinking  vessel.  If 
the  trend  desiring  the  cap  were  unopposed,  the  cap  should 
fly  miraculously  to  his  head;  appear  lying  on  the  deck 
at  his  feet;  the  steward  should  hurry  up  with  it;  or  at 
least  there  should  be  no  trouble  in  locating  it.  But 
though  the  cap  is  ardently  desired,  observe  that  it  is 
frantically  withheld.  Rather  than  risk  the  chance  of 
finding  that  cap,  the  dreamer  forgets  the  way  to  his  state- 
room. Of  course  all  this  ado  is  additional  testimony  that 
the  cap  is  no  conventional  piece  of  headgear.  The  writer 
has  noted  the  same  type  of  conflict  more  plainly  in  dreams 
in  which  he  would  make  appointments  to  meet  people 
toward  whom  he  had  some  opposition,  and  would  then 
lose  his  way  in  reaching  the  place  of  appointment. 

A  girl  quoted  by  Pfister  learned  from  playmates,  who 
made  sport  of  her  ignorance,  certain  false  and  masochistic 

"  Unc.,  480. 


218  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

fancies  concerning  sexual  matters.  She  developed  a 
stereotyped  nightmare,  in  which  she  walked  along  a 
straight  road  between  two  swamps.  Many  hands  were 
stretched  out  from  these,  to  draw  her  down,  but  ap- 
parently never  did  so.  Pfister  cites  this  as  representing 
the  conflict  betwen  trends  of  yielding  to  the  fancies,  and 
trends  of  escaping  from  them. 

These  two  cases  bring  up  another  aspect  of  dissociation, 
with  whose  brief  discussion  we  must  close  this  chapter. 
The  symbolizing  tendency  of  dreams  has  here  distorted 
the  conflicting  trends  from  their  original  form.12  The 
fancies  of  the  mire  of  unclean  thoughts  become  hands 
stretching  out  from  a  literal  swamp.  Not  only  does  the 
trend  for  finding  the  cap  conflict  with  a  countertrend  for 
losing  it,  but  it  is  not  really  a  cap  which  is  being  lost. 
The  dissociation  combines  with  a  symbolizing  of  the 
trends  which  are  dissociated.  We  met  phenomena  of 
this  sort  in  Chapter  IV,  under  the  head  of  affective  sym- 
bolism. There,  we  emphasized  that  the  affective  symbol 
derived  its  affect  from  an  original  experience  the  mem- 
ory of  which  might  be  lost  to  awareness.  Now,  we  em- 
phasize that  an  original  experience,  though  lost  to  aware- 
ness, may  still  be  represented  in  consciousness  by  some 
trend  in  symbolic  association  with  it.  Symbols  whose 
originals  are  thus  dissociated  from  awareness  may  be 
termed  dissociative  symbols.  A  toy  dog  is  to  the  old 
maid  who  cherishes  it  the  affective  symbol  of  a  human 
love-object.  It  becomes  also  a  dissociative  symbol,  if 
her  main  personality  fails  to  realize,  or  repudiates,  its 
connection  with  the  original  trend.  Dissociative  symbols 

12  This  is  neatly  expressed  by  Case  F  in  speaking  of  the  spirits 
"  showing  themselves  through  voices,  forms  and  various  practices ; 
they  are  very  clever  about  some  of  their  practices  and  cover  them  up." 
(P-  IQ7-) 


MECHANISMS  IN  DISSOCIATED  IDEAS     219 

are  the  most  difficult  and  uncertain  of  all  symbols  to 
demonstrate.  "  While  in  a  state  of  conservation  (in  the 
unconscious)  they  (the  original  trends)  are  capable  of 
undergoing  elaborate  fabrication  (symbolic  distortion) 
and  afterward  appearing  so  thoroughly  transformed  in 
consciousness  as  to  be  superficially  unrecognizable/* 
".  .  .  Hallucinations  and  bizarre  notions  and  delu- 
sions .  .  .  are  often  due  to  the  resurrecting  and  fabri- 
cating effect  of  unconscious  complexes  formed  by  the 
earlier  experiences  of  the  patient's  life."  13  Prince  and 
Tait  proved  the  dissociated  original  experiences  in  their 
"bell-tower"  and  "brown"  cases  (pp.  I28ff.),  respec- 
tively, by  direct  appeal  to  the  unconscious  in  which 
the  dissociated  originals  of  the  affective  symbols  were 
buried. 

The  symbolisms  of  dreams  are  regularly  of  the  disso- 
ciative type.  That  is,  we  are  seldom  immediately  aware 
of  them;  and  when  they  can  be  established,  it  must  be 
through  some  special  searching  for  the  originals  in  the 
unconscious.  The  examples  quoted  to  illustrate  dream 
symbolism  in  Chapter  III  (pp.  99ff.)>  represent  a  "nas- 
cent state "  of  dissociative  symbolism.  The  original 
is  not  so  far  dissociated  from  awareness  that  the  con- 
nection between  it  and  its  dream-symbol  is  lost  to  aware- 
ness. Prince  gives  a  good  example  of  such  a  nascent  dis- 
sociation, in  a  dream  also  symbolizing  a  conflict : 
(Quoted  from  Unc.,  98.) 

The  subject  dreamed  that  she  was  standing  where  two 
roads  separated.  One  was  broad  and  beautiful,  and  many 
people  she  knew  were  going  that  way.  The  other  road  was 
the  rocky  path,  quite  dark,  and  no  one  was  going  that  way, 
but  she  had  to  go.  And  she  said,  "  Oh,  why  must  I  go  this 
way  ?  Will  no  one  go  with  me  ?  "  And  a  voice  replied,  "  I 

18  Unc.,  100,  263.     (Parentheses  author's.) 


220  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

will  go  with  you."  She  looked  around,  and  there  were  some 
tall  black  figures ;  they  all  had  names  across  their  foreheads 
in  bright  letters,  and  the  one  who  spoke  was  Disappoint- 
ment ;  and  all  the  others  said,  "  We  will  go  with  you,"  and 
they  were  Sorrow,  Loss,  Pain,  Fear,  and  Loneliness,  and 
she  fell  down  on  her  face  in  anguish. 

There  were  actual  conflicts  and  sorrows  in  the  patient's 
personality,  with  which  the  dream-ideas  stand  in  near 
association.  The  nascent  character  comes  out  in  that 
the  figures  representing  Disappointment,  etc.,  are  not  un- 
recognizably disguised,  but  are  appropriately  dark,  and 
bear  their  names  upon  them. 

In  another  instance,  a  forgotten  idea,  not  an  unpleas- 
ant one,  reappears,  verifiably  in  awareness,  but  in  a  dis- 
torted form.14  The  patient  had  lost  a  check,  searching 
for  it  in  vain  for  five  days.  Early  one  morning  she  had  a 
vision  of  Christ,  and  at  that  moment  experienced  a  feel- 
ing that  she  would  find  the  check.  The  vision  moved 
toward  her  bureau.  Automatically  (without  "  any  con- 
scious idea  that  the  check  was  there"),  she  went  to  the 
bureau  and  found  the  check.  The  unconscious  memory 
of  the  location  of  the  check  manifests  itself  to  aware- 
ness in  a  figure  of  Christ  which  vaguely  indicates  the 
place. 

A  girl  reported  by  Pfister  15  had  as  a  child  held  the  be- 
lief that  babies  are  born  through  the  mouth.  At  the  age 
of  about  sixteen  she  begins  to  vomit  regularly  at  her  men- 
strual periods.  The  cessation  of  this  vomiting,  when  its 
analogy  with  the  former  belief  is  brought  to  the  girl's 
awareness,  is  evidence  of  unconscious  connection  between 
the  two,  the  vomiting  being  a  dissociative  symbol  of  the 
sexual  trend. 

14  Unc.,  189-190.  **D.  psa.  Met.,  128. 


MECHANISMS  IN  DISSOCIATED  IDEAS 

A  painful  delusional  trend  is  often  to  be  explained  by 
some  connection  with  another  dissociated  trend.  August 
Hoch  has  called  attention  to  a  type  of  psychosis  among 
women  in  the  content  of  which  the  father  plays  a  very 
prominent  role.  The  essential  trend  of  the  psychosis  is 
a  return  to  the  father.  Then  a  patient's  idea  of  being 
dead  may  arise  from  simple  association  with  the  fact 
that  the  father  is  dead.  Jung  mentions  a  case  in  which 
the  father  was  an  especially  wicked  man ;  the  patient  de- 
sired to  die  that  she  might  go  to  hell.  Such  a  trend 
does  not  genuinely  represent  a  belief  in  deserving  hell, 
much  less  a  desire  to  go  there.  It  is  but  the  symbolic 
expression  of  a  dissociated  trend  toward  the  father. 

Another  frequent  topic  of  dissociative  symbolism  is 
an  identification  of  sexual  with  electrical  processes.  As- 
sociations between  the  two  which  might  give  rise  to  such 
symbolism  are  not  difficult  to  imagine.  Both  are  spe- 
cially associated  with  personal  influence  and  attraction 
(magnetism),  also  between  persons  separated  at  a  dis- 
tance. Weak  electric  shocks  again  have  some  sensory 
likeness  to  the  thrill  of  mild  sexual  stimulations.  The 
analogy  is  not  confined  to  incidental  metaphor  or  mental 
disease.  Case  F  complained  of  a  loose  flow  of  personal 
magnetism.  It  would  come  in  waves ;  run  up  and  down 
the  spine  for  two  or  three  seconds,  a  pleasant  sensation. 
Others  of  F's  fancies  presented  this  symbolism  in  a  more 
dissociated  form : 

'  The  idea  came  to  me  that  I  was  giving  her  electric  baths ; 
shooting  these  shafts  of  light  inward  into  her  body."  It  is 
a  shaft  of  magnetic  power,  which  he  can  put  into  her  body 
at  any  desired  point.  He  roughly  sketches  it  on  a  piece  of 
paper.  It  can  be  made  very  large  or  very  small,  so  that  its 
entry  is  almost  like  the  prick  of  a  needle.  "  Probably  she 
at  first  did  not  have  this  power,  but  I  kept  putting  these 


MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

shafts  into  her  until  her  power  was  so  strengthened  that  she 
could  transmit  her  form."  Her  "  transmitted  "  form  serves 
him  for  masturbation  fancies.  Associated  with  this  was  the 
idea  of  a  luminous  pillar  extending  above  his  head  like  the 
beam  of  a  searchlight.  Being  advised  to  give  up  the  fancies 
of  this  woman,  he  said  it  was  his  relationship  with  her  that 
kept  it  up  straight ;  if  he  ceased  his  communication  with  her 
it  might  weaken,  bend  over  to  one  side,  and  thus  overbalance 
him. 

Another  dementia  praecox  case  presents  a  special  fancy 
for  a  certain  girl.  Although  he  has  had  pretty  free  sex- 
ual intercourse  otherwise,  he  has  not  had  intercourse  with 
this  girl,  only  caressed  her.  Nor  does  he  imagine  inter- 
course, or  some  less  conclusive  normal  relationship  with 
her,  in  his  psychosis.  Instead,  she  puts  a  wireless  ap- 
paratus upon  him;  giving  him  thoughts,  and  reading  his 
own.  Thus  the  trend  toward  the  girl  does  not  take  the 
form  of  a  normal  possession,  but  is  expressed,  as  with 
Case  F  above,  in  electrical  communications. 

The  concept  of  dissociative  symbolism  is,  that  a  mani- 
fest symptom  of  some  kind  may  be  symbolic  of  another 
trend  which  is  dissociated  from  awareness..  Symbols 
are  formed  through  any  and  all  kinds  of  association  be- 
tween symbol  and  thing  symbolized.  As  was  said  in 
other  words  in  Chapter  III  (p.  95),  we  must  suppose 
that  symbols  are  formed  through  the  same  kinds  of  as- 
sociation, whether  or  not  we  are  aware  of  the  whole 
symbolic  process.  As  these  connections  may  be  quite 
far-fetched  in  the  symbols  immediately  recognized,  we 
need  not  expect  them  to  be  otherwise  in  the  dissociative 
symbols  not  so  recognized.  With  this  in  mind,  the  con- 
cept of  dissociative  symbolism  is  the  readiest  interpreta- 
tion of  a  large  group  of  hysterical  phenomena.  As 
Prince  remarks : 


MECHANISMS  IN  DISSOCIATED  IDEAS     223 

.  .  .  When  the  disaggregation  of  personality  is  brought 
about  by  the  force  of  a  conflicting  emotion,  the  resulting 
hysterical  state  .  .  .  may  be  robbed  of  certain  sensory  or 
motor  functions,  although  these  functions  are  not,  as  far  as 
we  can  see,  logically  related  to  the  emotion  or  the  ideas 
coupled  with  it.  Thus  a  person  receives  an  emotional  shock 
and  develops  a  right  sided  anesthesia  or  paralysis  —  a  very 
common  phenomenon  .  .  .  again,  when  amnesia  results,  it 
may  cover  a  past  epoch  —  retrograde  amnesia  —  without 
obvious  reason  for  the  chronological  line  of  cleavage. 
(Unc.,  505,  506.)  (Italics  author's.) 

The  anesthesias,  paralyses  and  amnesias  are  to  be  re- 
garded as  representatives  of  other  trends  lying  in  the  un- 
conscious. These  manifest  symptoms  are  modes  of  ex- 
pression of  the  trends  buried  from  awareness.  What  the 
buried  trend  behind  such  a  symptom  is,  or  how  the  par- 
ticular anesthesia,  paralysis,  amnesia  or  other  hysterical 
symptom  comes  to  be  associated  with  the  buried  trend  so 
as  to  represent  it  in  awareness  —  can  be  determined,  if  at 
all,  only  by  exploration  of  the  unconscious. 

The  chief  concepts  to  be  gained  from  our  study  of  dis- 
sociation are  two : 

First,  the  compound  structure  of  mind,  and  the  rather 
unstable  nature  of  that  compound.  Study  of  the  brain 
long  since  led  to  the  abandonment  of  the  idea  that  the 
brain  was  a  homogeneous  organ.  Certain  parts  of  the 
brain  are  devoted  to  special  functions.  The  disease  that 
attacks  certain  parts  of  the  brain  affects  certain  functions, 
leaving  others  relatively  intact.  Neither  is  the  mind 
hojrnpgeneous.  It  is  made  up  .of  trends,  just  as  a  brain  is 
composed  of  nerve  tracts,  or  a  switchboard  of  wires. 
The  "  main  personality  "  is  a  name  given  to  a  dominant  jj 
combination  of  these  trends,  which  are  part  of  conscious-  H 
ness.  But  new  trends  are  continually  being  added  to  this 
combination,  and  others  are  dropping  out  from  it.  It 


MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

appears  that  any  mental  trend  or  combination  of  trends 
may  be  dissociated  from  any  other  trend  or  combination 
of  trends.  Every  trend  in  the  mind  has  potential  au- 
tonomy of  other  trends.  We  have  been  describing  some 
ways  in  which  such  autonomy,  or  independence,  is  mani- 
fested. It  has  been  seen  that  they  analyze  and  recombine 
in  an  infinity  of  ways.  Mental  stability  means  the  sta- 
bility with  which  the  compounds,  or  systems,  of  mental 
trends  are  preserved. 

Second,  the  import  of  the  unconscious.  The  material 
surveyed  throws  a  side-light  upon  these  relations.  Our 
concern  has  been  with  the  description  of  the  trends  which 
are  split  off  from  the  main  personality,  and  are  demon- 
strable in  the  unconscious.  The  amount  of  these  is  so 
great  as  to  indicate  that,  as  any  trend  may  split  off  from 
the  personal  consciousness,  so  may  any  trend  be  recovered 
to  it  which  has  ever  been  in  it,  or  even  brought  to  the 
field  of  awareness  without  its  having  ever  been  there,10  if 
only  the  experience  left  its  proper  impress  upon  the  or- 
ganism. 

The  material  presented  illustrates  the  facts  of  disso- 
ciation, and  the  ways  in  which  dissociation  is  manifested. 
An  unconscious,  made  up  of  mental  processes  dissociated 
from  the  main  personality,  plays  the  leading  role  in  the 
mental  symptoms  of  hystejia  and  dementia  praecox  condi- 
tions; and,  there  is  reason  to  think,  also  in  the  manic- 
depressive  psychosis.  From  the  first  two  of  these  sources 
has  come  our  most  definite  knowledge  about  the  uncon- 
scious. This  knowledge  has  been,  therefore,  chiefly  as- 
sociated with  mental  pathology.  It  is  characteristic  of 
these  mental  diseases  to  afford  direct  evidence  of  the  un- 
conscious in  the  form  of  automatic  writing,  hallucina- 

«  Unc.,  52ff. 


MECHANISMS  IN  DISSOCIATED  IDEAS     225 

tions,  somnambulisms  and  the  like.  They  are  like  a 
storm  which  tosses  the  ship  so  as  to  give  fitful  glimpses 
of  much  that  is  below  the  normal  water  line  of  conscious- 
ness. In  the  healthy  mind,  the  boundaries  between  the 
conscious  and  the  unconscious  are  more  firmly  held;  it 
is  like  a  ship  riding  a  calm  sea,  and  the  hull  below  the 
water  line  is  invisible.  But  that  portion  is  just  as  es- 
sential in  one  ship  as  in  the  other.  I{ .  jioes,  not  follow^  that 
because  the  unconscious  is  less  manifest,  it  is  less  signi- 
ficant in  normal  life. 

In  a  previous  chapter  was  mentioned  the  inadequacy 
of  the  conscious  to  give  satisfactory  explanations  of 
men's  voluntary  actions,  although  such  actions  have  con- 
scious antecedents.  "  And  the  more  sincerely  one  seeks 
to  trace  the  actual  course  of  psychogenesis,"  concludes 
James,  ".  .  .  the  more  clearly  one  perceives  *  the  slowly 
gathering  twilight  close  in  utter  night.' '  Since  these 
words  were  written,  it  has  been  recognized  that  this 
darkness  covers  no  hopeless  waste  of  inborn  "  behavior- 
patterns."  The  modern  concept  of  the  unconscious  pos- 
tulates that  memories  or  traces  of  the  individual's  ex- 
perience,17 of  which  the  person  is  unaware,  play  a  de- 
termining role  in  both  his  actions  and  thought.  James 
made  this  quite  clear  in  reference  to  habitual  processes. 
One's  skill  in  tennis  or  chess  does  not  depend  on  being 
conscious  of  all  one's  experience  in  them,  so  long  as  one 
has  had  the  experience.  Acquired  and  unconscious  men- 
tal processes  are  clearly  effective  in  habitual  action.  But 
such  effectiveness  is  probably  far  wider  than  this,  and  ex- 
tends to  the  most  distinctive  and  momentous  passages  of 
life.  Men's  failures  to  act  rationally,  perhaps  most  con- 
spicuous in  the  love-life,  are  acts  in  accordance  with 

17  Cf.  Prince's  neurograms;  von  Bechterew's  Spurcn. 
16 


r 


226  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

reasons  that  are  unconscious.  The  concept  of  the  un- 
conscious considers  these  determined  not  only  by  innate 
perversities,  but  also  by  experiences  buried  out  of  aware- 
ness. 

The  corollary  is  the  widest  possible  application  of  the 
law  of  habit.  Many  games,  though  forgotten,  make  the 
skillful  chess  player.  But,  experience  is  not  thus  de- 
pendent  upon  repetition,  to  be  effective  in  the  unconscious. 
This  point  was  made  in  Chapter  IV  (p.  133).  It  is  not 
only  good  and  bad  habits  that  acquire  an  unconscious  hold 
on  men  for  good  and  ill,  but  this  is  true  of  good  and 
bad  mental  trends  of  all  kinds.  Each  mental  process, 
habitual  or  incidental,  leaves  its  mark  upon  the  personal- 
ity, sometimes  conscious,  mostly  unconscious.  The 
"  memory  of  a  good  action  "  is  precious  long  after  the 
deed  is  forgotten.  Man's  special  faiths,  interests,  hob- 
bies,  friendships,  enmities,  ambitions  and  infatuations  are 
fashioned,  not  from  the  fraction  of  experience  he  can  re- 
member, nor  yet  from  innate  features  of  being  he  can- 
not control;  but  from  a  body  of  unconscious  experience 
vaster  than  knowledge,  which  imparts  to  the  objects  of 
consciousness,  by  affective  transference,  their  human  val- 
ues. This  mighty  and  invisible  potency  of  forgotten 
experience  gives  added  import  to  all  education,  and  sanc- 
tion to  each  daily  task. 


CHAPTER  VII 

EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES 

PSYCHOLOGY  partakes  of  both  social  and  natural  sci- 
ence in  its  subject  matter,  and  in  its  relation  to  experi- 
ment. "  The  best  the  social  scientist  can  do,"  writes  Kel- 
ler,1 "  is  the  worst  the  natural  scientist  has  to  do  —  to 
wait  on  nature  and  history  to  perform  quasi  experiments 
for  him."  Crile  sets  more  value  on  nature's  quasi  experi- 
ments in  the  field  of  mental  function.  "  It  is  idle  to 
consider  any  experimental  researches  into  the  cause  of 
phenomena  that  have  been  developed  by  natural  selection 
through  millions  of  years.  Nature  herself  has  made  the 
experiments  on  a  world-wide  scale  and  the  data  are  before 
us  for  interpretation."  2  It  is  nature's  experiments  that 
have  chiefly  concerned  this  book.  But  nature's  experi- 
ments in  psychology,  as  in  chemistry  and  physics,  are  not 
always  made  so  that  men  can  analyze  them  for  purposes 
of  application.  Laboratory  chemistry  and  physics  have 
been  of  vital  help  in  man's  use  of  natural  forces.  Psy- 
chological experiments,  also,  analyze  mental  phenomena 
as  nature  does  not,  and  make  them  objective  as  unaided 
reflection  cannot.  Against  the  difficulties  of  human  ex- 
perimentation, psychology  sets  the  human  importance  of 
its  problems  and  the  precision  of  its  results.  These  give 
to  experimentation  its  place  in  the  science  of  mind. 

1" Societal  Evolution"  (1915),  128. 
2"Origin  and  Nature  of  the  Emotions"  (1915),  12. 

227 


228  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

Experimental  psychology  attempts  the  measurement 
and  comparison  of  the  mental  qualities  of  individuals. 
Among  the  first  mental  differences  thus  measured  was  the 
precision  of  certain  time-observations  in  astronomy. 
This  was  called  the  "  personal  equation,"  as  though  it 
were  the  chief  or  only  measurable  individual  difference; 
which,  indeed,  so  far  as  astronomy  was  concerned,  was 
the  case.  The  science  of  mental  measurements  has 
grown  with  the  devising  of  the  many  other  ways  in  which 
attributes  can  be  measured  and  compared. 

Such  differences  appear  in  all  measurements  of  individ- 
ual attributes.  But  some  attributes  are  much  more  im- 
portant, or  have  a  much  wider  importance  for  life,  than 
others.  In  ordinary  life  it  is  more  important  for  a  man 
to  have  good  sight  than  a  good  sense  of  smell.  For  a 
tea  taster,  a  hyperacute  sense  of  smell  would  be  more 
important  than  a  fine  ear  for  music.  Most  people,  how- 
ever, would  prefer  the  latter.  It  is  not  so  important  to 
remember  a  mass  of  facts,  as  to  be  able  to  reason  clearly 
about  what  one  knows.  The  several  measurements  of 
psychological  functions  are  of  interest  according  to  the 
value  for  human  adaptations  of  the  qualities  measured. 

For  instance,  we  can  make  very  precise  measurements 
of  a  person's  hearing,  or  sense  of  touch.  A  defect  in  the 
former  has  to  be  pretty  marked  before  it  is  a  serious 
handicap  in  life;  much  more  marked  than  exact  experi- 
ments will  readily  determine.  In  early  years  such  defects 
may  not  be  rightly  understood.  School  children  may  be 
dull  because  they  do  not  hear  or  see  well.  Simple  experi- 
ments are  useful  in  discovering  and  helping  such  cases. 
Some  specialized  occupations  demand  (as  is  true  of  the 
tea  taster)  an  acuteness  of  sense  that  is  not  so  necessary 
for  ordinary  life.  The  locomotive  engineer  must  not  be 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES  229 

color-blind;  proper  tests  must  certify  as  to  this.  Such 
sensory  aptitudes  are  generally  easy  to  measure ;  but  it  is 
only  great  deficiency  in  them  that  is  of  wide  importance 
for  adaptation  to  life.  Experiment  plays  a  minor  part 
here,  because  the  defect  appears  without  refined  observa- 
tions. In  the  great  majority,  success  depends  on  other 
things  than  the  bare  possession  of  good  eyes  and  ears. 

One  may  measure  the  muscular  strength  of  a  maximum 
effort,  and  the  quickness  of  movement.  Civilization  has 
diminished  the  importance  of  these  for  adaptation  to  life. 
Generally,  if  these  are  so  abnormal  as  to  be  a  factor  in  a 
person's  success  or  failure,  they  are  evident  without  ex- 
perimental methods.  Only  in  certain  cases,  where  we 
wish  to  set  definite  standards  of  muscular  strength,  as  in 
candidacy  for  a  football  team,  do  we  resort  to  experi- 
mental measures.  Much  exact  work  has  been  done  in 
studying  the  precision  and  economy  of  movements,  be- 
cause such  economy  is  important  for  industrial  operatives. 
Experiment  helps  to  determine  the  most  efficient  motions 
for  the  performance  of  a  given  task.3  But  adaptation  to 
life  as  a  whole  lies  not  in  keenness  of  sense,  or  strength 
and  speed  of  movement.  The  race  and  battle  are  to  those 
who  make  the  best  use  of  their  speed  and  strength. 
Adaptation  lies  in  the  right  coordination  of  sense  and 
movement.  The  locomotive  engineer's  ability  to  tell  red 
from  green,  and  the  strength  to  move  the  lever,  mean 
nothing  unless  he  can  also  move  the  lever  promptly  in  the 
right  direction.  Let  the  engineer's  right  response  to  his 
signal  be  the  example  of  right  response  to  life  in  general. 
What  experiments  can  we  apply,  to  show  what  adapta- 
tions to  life  a  person  can  make,  and  how  well  he  can  make 
them? 

3C/.  World's  Work  (July,  1916),  321-336. 


230  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

Alljidaptations jare ^mental _  or  motor  reactions.     We 
measure  what  happens  in  a  person  under  a  given  experi- 
mental situation.     We  examine  the  meaning  of  the  meas- 
ures for  the  person's  adaptation  to  life,  and  to  what  sort 
of  life.     A  fairly  detailed  account  of  important  types  of 
experimental  methods  is  more  advisable  for  this  chapter, 
than  a  superficial  glance  over  the  whole  field.     In  the 
.^nFoYeground  of  usefulness  are  series  of  experiments  de- 
l\      signed  to  trace  the  development  of  intelligence.     They 
measure  a  person's  general  fund  of  information,  and  how 
")  .     well  he  can  accomplish  certain  standard  tasks.     Their 
great  use  lies  in  promptly  distinguishing  children  whose 
abnormally  low  intelligence  makes  them  a  drag  on  their 
schoolfellows;  also  in  the  early  recognition  of  children 
whose  exceptional  brightness  makes  them  worthy  of  spe- 
cial educational  advantages.     But  intelligence  is  neither 
\\  the  sole  factor  in  a  person's  adjustments,  nor  often  the 
\\most  important  one.     Experimental  methods  are  likewise 
"called  upon  for  information  about  a  person's  emotional  or 
instinctive  life,  and  how  this  will  combine  with  intelli- 
gence to  affect  his  behavior  as  a  whole.     Special  situa- 
tions are  created  in  the  laboratory;  and  the  manner  in 
which  the  subject  meets  them  is  compared  with  the  qual- 
ity of  his  adjustments  to  the  outer  world.     They  are  con- 
ceived as  tests  of  performance  as  well  as  of  intelligence. 
i   Light  has  also  been  sought  on  these  points   from  the 
I  method  called  measurement  by  relative  position;  through 
\  direct  studies  6t  tne  quality  ot  the  thought  processes  (as- 
I  sociation)  ;  and  from  systematic  methods  of  observing 
I  and   interpreting  general   behavior.     All  these   are  ap- 
proaches from  different  angles  to  the  common  goal  of 
connecting  something  that  can  be  objectively  measured, 
like  a  laboratory  performance,  with  the  person's  abilities 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES     231 

and  tendencies  in  actual  life.  It  is  found  that  the  ap- 
proach is  least  difficult  when  the  processes  to  be  measured 
are  essentially  those  of  intellectual  or  motor  skill.  Its 
obscurity  increases  the  more  these  processes  are  involved 
with  emotional  or  instinctive  factors.  This  latter  phase 
is  considered  in  the  present  chapter  by  the  discussion  of 
"  relative  position  "  and  "  association  "  methods.  Fac- 
tors from  the  unconscious  enter  to  complicate  the  mean- 
ing of  these  experiments,  in  ways  partly  set  forth  in  pre- 
vious chapters,  and  partly  to  be  further  indicated. 

We  may  begin  with  measurements  of  intelligence. 
There  are  some  mental  adaptations  which  a  person  must 
make  to  any  kind  of  normal  life.  If  he  cannot  make 
these,  he  is  deficient.  These  defects  are  looked  upon  as 
defects  of  intelligence.  The  past  decade  has  witnessed 
most  fruitful  efforts  toward  devising  experiments  which 
will  show  whether  and  how  well  such  adaptations  may 
be  made.  The  individual's  adaptability,  his  capacity  for 
meeting  life,  increases  as  he  grows  to  mature  age.  An 
infant  is  supposed  to  be  helpless,  and  a  man  to  take  care 
of  himself.  At  any  given  age,  there  is  a  certain  capac- 
it^for^  adaptation  which  is  ^normal  for  that_age.  The 
genius  of  Binet  developed  some  simple  graded  tests  which 
a  child  should  pass,  at  each  age;  what  he  should  be  able 
to  do  at  five  years,  what  tests  he  should  pass  at  six  years, 
and  so  on  up  to  twelve  years  and  more.  Then,  if  a  per- 
son twelve  years  old  could  do  no  more  than  a  normal 
person  seven  years  old  performs,  he  is  clearly  deficient, 
and  by  a  measured  amount.  On  the  other  hand,  if  a 
person  nine  years  old  can  pass  tests  that  one  is  not  ex- 
pected to  pass  before  eleven  years,  that  person  is  clearly 
superior  in  the  qualities  measured  by  the  tests. 

A  convincing  testimony  to  the  value  of  Binet's  concep- 


232  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

tion  is  the  extent  to  which  the  original  tests  have  been 
revised  and  emended  by  many  hands.  Kuhlmann  pre- 
sents a  revision  containing  tests  for  mentalities  of  one- 
fourth,  one-half,  one  and  two  years.4  The  latest  and 
most  elaborate  presentation  of  them  is  that  undertaken 
at  Stanford  University  under  the  guidance  of  Terman.5 
It  is  graded  by  years  from  three  to  sixteen  years,  there 
being  six  tests  for  each  year  up  to  ten  years,  with  alter- 
nates. Sixteen  years  is  regarded  as  "  average  adult " 
ability.  An  additional  series  for  "  superior  "  adult  abil- 
ity is  also  provided. 

Examinations  of  this  type  have  indicated  that  adults 
who  fail  to  pass  tests  that  are  normal  for  twelve  years 
are  not  able  to  maintain  themselves  independently  in  the 
world.  Exceptions  to  this  have  been  pointed  out;  but 
it  remains  a  practical  definition  of  arrested  development 
to  say  that  in  these  functions  one  does  only  so  well  as  a 
normal  five,  seven  or  ten  year  old.  This  is  the  most 
readily  intelligible  means  of  expressing  the  measure  of 
defect. 

Apart  from  the  actual  tests  involved,  an  objection  to 
this  scaling  of  tests  by  years  is  its  cumbrousness.  Ex- 
pertness  is  required  in  making  a  large  number  of  tests. 
The  examiner  must  find  the  approximate  level  of  the  sub- 
ject, and  make  tests  for  the  years  about  this  level.  The 
scoring  is  complicated  by  the  fact  that  a  subject  may  pass 
tests  above  his  age  and  fail  in  tests  below  it.  It  seemed 
that  what  the  "  year-scale  "  conception  gained  in  super- 
ficial clearness  it  lost  in  convenience  and  accuracy  of  in- 
terpretation. 

*  Journal  of  Psycho-Asthcnics,  Monog.  Suppl.  I   (1912),  41. 
5 "  The  Measurement  of  Intelligence,"  etc.   (1916),  362.    An  ex- 
tensive and  classified  bibliography  of  year-scale  work  is  included. 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES     333 

To  meet  these  difficulties,  Yerkes  and  his  pupils  essen- 
tially altered  the  treatment  of  the  tests.6  They  use  a 
selected  series  of  tests,  nearly  all  of  which  are  represented 
in  the  year-scales  —  twenty  in  all.  They  vary  much  in 
difficulty.  A  subject,  regardless  of  age,  receives  a  cer- 
tain number  of  "  points,"  according  to  the  kind  of  test 
he  passes.  This  series  is  called  a  "  point-scale  "  instead 
of  a  "  year-scale  " ;  if  the  subject  passes  all  the  tests  per- 
fectly, he  makes  a  score  of  100  points.  A  normal  adult 
should  score  not  below  75  points.  The  nature  of  the 
tests  in  this  "  adolescent  "  scale  is  briefly  as  follows : 

i.  Chooses  prettier  of  pictures.  2.  Sees  picture  lacks, 
e.g.,  feet,  hair,  etc.  3.  Compares  lines  and  weights.  4. 
Memory  span  for  digits.  5.  Counts  backward.  6.  Repeats 
sentences  of  different  lengths,  from  memory.  7.  Describes 
pictures.  8.  Arranges  five  weights  in  order.  9.  Compares, 
e.g.,  an  apple  and  a  cucumber.  10.  Defines,  e.g.,  fork, 
table,  cat.  n.  Resists  suggestions.  12.  Copies  simple  de- 
signs. 13.  Gives  words  for  three  minutes.  14.  Arranges 
three  words  in  sentence.  15.  Tells  what  to  do  if,  e.g.,  it 
begins  to  rain.  16.  Draws  designs  from  memory.  17.  Sees 
absurdity  in  given  sentences.  18.  Puts  given  words  to- 
gether to  make  sentences.  19.  Defines,  e.g.,  health,  gener- 
osity, forgiveness.  20.  Completes  analogies  like :  Up  is  to 
down  as  head  is  to  ... 

The  number  of  points  which  children  of  different  years 
made  ran  as  follows  in  a  miscellaneous  group7  of  sub- 
jects : 

At  age      4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-    Adult 

Points    14-22-29-34-39-52-59-64-74-74-78-77-     91;  75 1  persons  in  all 

0  Yerkes,  Bridges,  Hardwick,  "  A  Point  Scale  for  Measuring 
Mental  Ability"  (1915),  168,  esp.  31-48.  Cf.  also  Haines,  "Point- 
Scale  Ratings  of  Delinquent  Boys,  Girls,"  Psycho!.  Rev.,  22  (1915), 
104-109.  "  Diagnostic  Values  of  some  Performance  Tests,"  Ibtd., 
299-305.  "  Relative  Values  of  Point-Scale  and  Year-Scale  Measure- 
ments of  one  Thousand  Minor  Delinquents,"  Journ.  Exp.  Psychol.  T 
(1916),  51-82.  "Mental  Measurements  of  the  Blind,"  Psychol. 
Monog.,  89  (1916),  86. 

7  Yerkes,  Bridges,  Hardwick,  op.  cit.,  64-65. 


234  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

Recently,  Yerkes  has  been  experimenting  with  a  scale 
for  rating  corresponding  abilities  in  normal  adults. 
Twenty  tests  are  taken,  more  difficult  than  those  for  the 
adolescent  scale,  and  graded  under  more  rigid  conditions. 
There  is  still  much  division  of  opinion  on  the  relative 
merits  of  year  and  point  scales.  In  general,  the  relative 
merit  of  the  point-scale  concept  increases  as  the  abilities 
of  the  persons  tested  become  higher. 

An  essential  development  in  these  systems  of  testing 
is  the  "  intelligence  quotient."  8  A  child  testing  one  year 
behind  his  age  at  five  years  is  more  backward  than  a  child 
who  tests  one  year  behind  his  age  at  ten  years.  It  would 
not  be  fair  to  say  that  each  is  one  year  backward.  The 
"  Intelligence  Quotient "  (or  IQ)  aims  to  reduce  these 
values  to  a  common  denominator;  it  may  be  applied  to 
both  year  and  point  scales.  By  the  Yerkes  scale,  a  per- 
son of  4.7  years  who  scored  but  n  points  (the  norm  for 
this  age  is  21)  would  thus  show  an  IQ  9  of  11/{>i  or  .52, 
which  expresses  the  relation  between  what  the  subject  has 
done  and  what  the  normal  subject  should  do.  Kuhlmanri 
considers  that  if  one's  "  Binet  age  "  divided  by  chrono- 
logical age  gives  a  quotient  of  .75  or  less,  this  fact  always 
indicates  feeblemindedness. 1(v  In  Terman's  work  this 
figure  is  placed  nearer  .7O.11  It  is  supposed  that  the 
direct  influence  of  age  in  improving  performance  ceases 
at  about  sixteen  years  (Terman)  ;  to  compute  the  IQ,  the 
scores  ("mental  age"  or  number  of  points)  for  older 
persons  are  divided  by  the  accomplishment  appropriate  to 
this  age. 

8C/.  Doll,  Note  on  the  "Intelligence  Quotient,"  Training  School 
Bulletin  (Jan.  1916). 

•The  term  "coefficient  of  mental  ability  "  (C.  M.  A.),  has  also  been 
used  in  point-scale  work. 

10  Journal  of  Psycho-Asthenics,  iq  (1915),  235. 

11  "The  Measurement  of  Intelligence"  (1916),  81. 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES          235 

i 

Year-scales  have  the  advantage  over  point-scales,  that 
they  are  more  adaptable  to  new  tests.  A  year-scale  can 
be  determined  for  any  test  in  which  it  exists  by  simply 
submitting  it  to  a  number  of  normal  individuals  at  each 
age.  Pintner  has  done  this  effectively  for  the  Knox  Cube 
Test ; 12  and  it  is  being  done  for  other  valuable  tests  not 
included  in  the  standardized  series.  This  is,  in  fact,  what 
standardization  now  means  when  applied  to  psychological 
tests. 

Both  "  year  "  and  "  point  "  scales  consist  of  a  number 
of  different  tests.  The  summary  given  of  the  Yerkes 
adolescent  scale  indicates  their  general  character.  Prac- 
tical considerations  make  them  simple,  with  few  demands 
on  apparatus.  While  they  are  called  measures  of  intelli- 
gence, no  careful  protagonist  of  the  methods  claims  that 
they  measure  the  whole,  or  a  sufficient  part,  of  the  mental 
qualities  involved  in  adaptation  to  life.  It  may  be  said 
with  assurance  that  they  measure  a  necessary  part,  since 
people  who  do  not  measure  up  to  the  ability  of  twelve 
years,  or  75  points,  or  whose  "  IQ  "  is  below  .70,  are 
likely  to  have  difficulties  in  meeting  the  usual  conditions 
of  independent  life.  There  is^  however  all  |;nn  pnpjtJY* 
testimony  that  good  performance  in  these  tests  carries  no 
guaranty  of  adjustment  to  life.  Thus,  excellent  records 
have  been  obtained  with  long-standing  dementia  praecox 
cases.  The  scales  for  the  functions  measured  in  the  in- 
telligence scales  are  good  attests  of  mental  defect,  or  su- 
periority in  particular  functions,  but  uncertain  ones  for 
mental  normality. 

Healy  and  his  co-workers  have  found  considerable  dif- 
ficulty with  the  earlier  Binet  tests;  and  it  must  be  ac- 
knowledged that  their  objections  apply  in  some  degree 

"Psychol.  Rev.  22  (1915),  377-401. 


236  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

to  "  intelligence  "  measures  as  a  whole.13  Healy  himself 
emphasizes  the  more  general  disadvantage,  also  brought 
out  in  the  earlier  paper  of  Schmitt,  of  their  "  calling^so 
greatly  for  language  responses."  This  is  unfortunate 
in  two  ways,  first  as  ill-suited  to  the  polyglot  American 
population,  and  second  because  it  unduly  favors  the  "  ver- 
balist "  type  of  defective  (the  verbomane  of  Ossip- 
Lourie),  whose  language  powers  are  out  of  proportion 
to  the  rest  of  his  mental  constitution.  Of  such  a  case 
Healy  remarks: 

"  Here  is  a  girl  with  language  ability  immensely  above  her 
standard  of  performance  in  other  ways.  Her  record  on 
the  Binet  tests  is  not  an  indication  of  the  extent  of  her  mental 
defectiveness,  because  they  call  for  an  undue  amount  of 
language  performance.  Much  more  consonant  with  her 
social  failure  are  our  findings  on  other  tests."  But  the  Binet 
record  in  this  case  was  also  far  from  normal. 

Healy  therefore  has  worked  along  lines  independent 
of  the  Binet  conception,  not  toward  intelligence  tests,  but 
toward  what  he  calls  performance  tests,  and  tests  of 
"  performance  with  other  material  than  language."  The 
experimental  responses  are  not  made  in  language,  as  they 
would  be  in  a  "  word-association  "  test  or  a  "  definition  " 
test.  They  consist  in  such  adaptations  as  fitting  differ- 
ently shaped  pieces  of  wood  in  place  to  fill  a  frame. 
(Construction  tests.)  Irregularly  shaped  pieces  were  cut 
out  of  a  picture  mounted  on  wood,  and  these  must  be 
correctly  replaced.  A  "  puzzle  box  "  is  opened  by  some 
simple  mechanical  adjustments.  But  his  most  distinctive 
contribution  is  the  pictorial  completion  test.  A  high 
value  has  long  been  assigned  among  mental  measurements 

18  Those  discussed  by  Schmitt,  are  important,  if  mostly  outside  the 
scope  of  this  volume.  "Pedagogical  Seminary,1'  19  (1912),  186-200, 
Psychol.  Monog.j  83  (1915),  esp.  pp.  51-67. 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES    237 

to  the  so-called  Kombinationsmethode  (or  completion 
test)  of  Ebbinghaus,  in  the  best  known  form  of  which 
certain  letters  or  words  are  left  out  of  a  printed  text,  and 
the  subject  supplies  them  as  rapidly  as  possible.  But  its 
dependence  on  language  ability  is  extreme.  Healy's  prob- 
lem was  to  represent  its  valuable  features  outside  the  lan- 
guage field.  He  accomplished  this  by  obtaining  a  pic- 
ture 14  of  a  kind  to  attract  the  juveniles  with  whom  he 
has  mostly  to  deal,  and  cutting  ten  square  pieces  out  of 
different  parts  of  it.  All  pieces  are  the  same  size.  The 
subject  is  then  supplied  with  fifty  pieces  of  this  form,  ten 
of  which  fit  logically  into  the  places  cut  out,  while  the 
others  are  more  or  less  irrelevant.  For  example,  there 
would  be  a  bat  or  a  tennis  racket  which  might  fit  into  a 
baseball  game.  The  subject  must  put  into  each  place  the 
piece  which  logically  fits  there.  The  possible  errors  are 
not  all  of  the  same  degree ;  it  would  not  be  so  bad  an  error 
to  put  the  tennis  racket  in  place  of  the  bat  as  to  put  a  book 
there.  Healy  says  of  it : 15 

At  II  years  this  test  should  be  readily  accomplished  with 
not  more  than  two  final  errors,  and  certainly  not  more  than 
one  illogical  error.  Most  of  our  group  of  normal  offenders 
by  II  years  do  better  than  this,  and  even  some  at  10  years 
do  as  well.  With  agejtbere  seems  to  be  no  marked  average  J^ 
increase  of  ability. ^The  median  or  average  performance 
for  "alTmtn"e  group  of  those  ordinary  in  ability  above  10  years 
is  one  final  error  and  no  illogical  error. 

Besides  lessening  the  language  difficulty,  performance 
tests  of  Healy's  type  are  calculated  to  appeal  more  to  the 
natural  interests  of  the  subject.  "  The  will  to  cooperate 

14  Reproduced  in  "The  Individual  Delinquent"  (1915),  facing  p.  96. 
Cf.  also  "A  Pictorial  Completion  Test,"  Psychol.  Rev.  21  (1914), 
189-203. 

""The  Individual  Delinquent,"  in. 


238  MENTAL'  ADJUSTMENTS 

and  put  forth  the  best  effort  is  not  going  to  be  brought 
out  in  offenders  by  asking  them  to  memorize  nonsense 
syllables  and  perform  other  feats  of  rote  memory."  He 
mentions  a  case  in  which  "the  stimulation  of  a  good 
meal  "  raised  the  Binet  findings  over  two  years.  Frances 
Porter  brings  out  these  points  in  an  analysis  of  several 
cases,  in  which  the  performance  tests  give  better  informa- 
tion than  those  of  the  scales,  except  among  very  young 
children.16  The  subject's^attitude  toward  the  "  perform- 
ance "  experiments  is  thought  to  ¥e  more  representative 

1"  .^-..^•.^••••••MMOjtfcM^BMBBM**'*'** 

of  his  attitude  toward  real  life,  and  his  reactions  are  ac- 
cordingly  more  represent?*""'  ^f  *"'°  a«*Hr>nc  in  tfrg  -n^rkl 
at  large.  On  the  other  hand,  Healy's  tests  are  not  so  fully 
standardized  as  the  scales,  and  there  is  more  of  the  "  per- 
sonal  equation  "  in  their  interpretation.  The  experiment 
becomes  less  an  observation  for  its  own  sake  than  a  stand- 
ard situation,  to  which  the  subject's  general  reaction  is 
significant.  This  point  of  view  has  mucn  to  commend 
it,  as  the  laboratory  in  general  presents  a  less  artificial 
situation  than  do  the  single  experimental  tasks. 

In  Knox's  testing  of  immigrants,17  the  language  factor 
must  also  be  obviated.  Like  Healy,  he  makes  reports  of 
several  concrete  performance  tests,  typified  by  form- 
boards  and  construction  "  puzzles,"  in  which  the  subject 
must  fit  blocks  into  their  correct  places  on  a  frame.  He 
also  suggests  judgments  of  emotional  expressions;  and 
the  "  ink-blot  "  test  in  which  one  sees  what  is  suggested 
by  the  random  shapes  of  the  blots;  this  is  intended  as  a 
test  of  the  imaginative  faculty.  His  best  known  contri- 
bution is  the  "  Cube  "  test  standardized  by  Pintner.  In  it, 

18 "  Difficulties  in  the  Interpretation  of  Mental  Tests,"  Psyehol. 
Clinic  (1915),  140-158,  167-180.  Cf.  also  Bronner,  "Attitude  as  It 
Affects  Performance  of  Tests."  Psyehol.  Rev.  (1*516),  303-331. 

1T"  Alien  Mental  Defectives,"  Stoelting,  Chicago. 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES  S39 

four  small  cubes  are  placed  before  the  subject  and  the 
experimenter  taps  them  with  another  cube  in  an  irregular 
succession.  The  subject  is  to  repeat,  that  is,  exactly  imi- 
tate the  experimenter's  movements.  At  first  simple  tap- 
ping sequences  are  made  and  then  more  and  more  difficult! 
sequences,  until  those  are  reached  which  are  too  compli-J 
cated  for  the  subject  to  follow.  His  efficiency  in  the  test 
is  measured  by  the  degree  of  complication  of  sequence 
that  he  can  follow.  Pintner's  standardization,  with  its 
simplicity  and  ease  of  making,  gives  this  test  high  value ; 
it  combines  convenience  with  a  significant  result. 

An  inconvenient,  but  in  other  ways  desirable,  feature 
of  the  Binet  scales  is  their  continual  use  of  different  tests 
for  different  ages.  The  kinds  of  performance  that  test 
a  child  of  four  or  five  years  are  not  so  suitable  for  one  of 
ten  or  twelve  years.  The  Yerkes  point-scale  too,  while 
scored  independently  of  age,  is  heterogeneous  in  make-up. 
There  are  advantages  in  a  small  range  of  tests,  or  even  a 
single  test,  which  would  show  the  step-by-step  progress 
of  the  individual  in  the  same  kind  of  mental  process. 
Pintner's  standardization  of  the  "  Cube  "  test  is  a  step 
in  this  direction.  So  is  the  midtiple.jJteice  method  of  * 
Yerkes,  which  is  applicable  from  the  highest  human  intel- 
ligence to  the  lowest  forms  of  animal  life.  It  involves 
the  ability  to  select  from  a  number  of  equally  possible 
reactions  a  certain  correct  one,  through  its  relation  to  the 
other  possible  reactions.  For  example,  the  correct  re- 
action maY-Jje  to  strike  the  rightmost_QI—l£UlBQat  or 
teleprraph  keys  that  are  presentefl.  &uch  a  bit  of  learning 
lies  within  the  accomplishment  of  a  trained  animal.  Or 
the  correct  key  might  be  alternately  to  right  and  left  from 
the  end,  a  distance  of  one  plus  the  highest  integer  above 
the  square  root  of  the  number  of  the  keys.  This  would 


240  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

baffle  most  human  attempts.  One  records  the  number  of 
unsuccessful  trials  before  solution,  as  well  as  the  point 
at  which  the  problem  becomes  too  difficult  to  solve. 

Many  tests  have  played  their  greatest  part  in  the  diag- 
nosis of  defects.  At  least  equally  important  is  the  devel- 
opment of  methods  to  detect  early  aptitudes.  On  the  one 
hand  we  wish  to  know  whether  an  individual  is  defective, 
and  on  the  other  hand,  what  he  is  best  fitted  for.  God- 
dard  has  found  fitness  fo?*ceTfaTh  grades  of  work  deter- 
minable  through  the  Binet  scale,  which  Healy  quotes  with 
some  reservation.  "  The  feeble-minded  individual  who 
grades  6  years,  for  instance,  does  tasks  of  short  duration, 
and  washes  dishes;  the  mental  defective  of  8  years  runs 
errands,  does  light  work,  makes  beds ;  the  one  who  grades 
10  years  is  a  good  institutional  helper,  does  good  rou- 
tine work.  .  .  .  Exceedingly  interesting,  though  ...  we 
should  feel  it  entirely  unsafe  to  give  either  a  prognosis 
or  to  suggest  treatment  by  means  of  it." 

Beyond  the  limits  of  the  subnormal,  the  problem  of 
mental  measurement  divides  into  two  main  parts.  The 
first  is  a  specialized  inquiry  whether  a  certain  directly 
measurable  aptitude  is  present  in  a  person,  or  what  apti- 
tudes he  has.  This  rounds  out  the  scope  of  "  intelli- 
gence "  testing.  The  second  concerns  the  complicated 
questions  of  "  temperamental  "  qualities,  which  are  more 
affected  by  emotional  and  instinctive  factors. 
/  The  directly  measurable  aptitudes  that  are  significant 
in  this  connection  are  those  directly  useful  in  making  a 
living.  This  is  the  field  of  vocational  psychology.  The 
problem  of  vocational  selection  is  one  of  measuring  and 
predicting  ability  to  make  specific  adaptations.  One 
measures  and  predicts  a  person's  capacity  for  meeting 
particular  situations,  as  those  of  the  telephone  switch- 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES  241 

board,  or  the  operation  of  an  industrial  machine,  or  quick 
computation  with  figures.  Such  aptitudes  can  be  directly 
measured  in  the  laboratory,  because  the  laboratory  can  re- 
produce quite  closely  the  actual  conditions  under  which 
the  work  is  done.  Allowance  must  be  made  for  the  fact 
that  the  subject's  knowledge  of  the  "  best  "  nature  of  the 
performance  may  affect  the  normality.  He  may  be 
spurred  by  unusual  effort  or  confused  by  nervousness. 
For  example,  the  writer  has  reported  observations  of 
typewriting  in  which  the  performance  of  two  subjects 
was  sometimes  measured  as  a  part  of  a  laboratory  experi- 
ment, and  sometimes  without  their  knowledge,  in  the 
course  of  their  regular  work.  The  two  subjects  each 
wrote  about  nine-tenths  as  fast  under  "  actual  life  "  con- 
ditions as  under  laboratory  conditions.  On  the  other 
hand,  one  subject  made  five  times  as  many  mistakes  under 
the  laboratory  conditions  as  under  the  actual  life  condi- 
tions; the  other  made  only  twice  as  many.  If  this  result 
be  generally  valid,  a  typewriter's  speed  will  be  nine-tenths 
of  his  laboratory  rate,  but  no  laboratory  performance  is 
a  sufficient  index  of  accuracy  in  typewriting. 

The  progress  of  tests  for  vocational  selection  in  the 
kinds  of  vocation  above  discussed  indicates  that  the  gap 
between  laboratory  performance  and  actual  life  perform- 
ance is  not  an  impassable  one.  The  direct  measures  of 
motor  processes  and  the  simpler  intellectual  processes 
here  involved  give  a  fair  idea  of  the  individual's  perform- 
ance in  allied  functions  in  actual  life.  Whoever  can 
passably  operate  the  model  switchboard  in  the  laboratory 
should  learn  to  operate  the  real  one  in  the  Company's 
"  exchange."  18  Hollingworth  describes  and  discusses 

18  With  the  reservations  pointed  out  by  Hollingworth,  "  Vocational 
Psychology,"  116-117. 
11 


many  experimental  procedures  that  are  significant  in  this 
direction.  His  book  19  should  be  the  guide  of  those  who 
are  to  explore  this  side  of  dynamic  psychology  beyond  the 
limits  of  the  present  chapter.  It  must  suffice  in  this  con- 
nection to  discuss  the  principles  underlying  experimenta- 
tion in  the  fields  of  character  and  temperament,  and  to 
describe  specific  experiments  illustrating  the  points  to  be 
considered. 

It  has  already  been  mentioned  that  the  abilities  of  the 
intelligence  scales  are  not  a  complete  test  of  adaptability 
to  life.  The  same  appears  true  of  psychomotor  adapta- 
tions of  the  type  just  discussed.  A  person  may  be  en- 
tirely capable  in  the  functions  reached  by  these  experi- 
ments, and  still  for  "  temperamental "  reasons  be  unable 
to  adjust  himself  happily.  The  point  is  perhaps  worth 
some  emphasis,  that  conspicuous  failures  of  adaptation, 
as  manifested  in  manic-depressive  or  dementia  praecox 
cases,  are  continually  to  be  observed  in  persons  of  marked 
psychomotor  aptitudes  such  as  typewriting,  tennis,  or  per- 
formance on  musical  instruments.  Indeed,  skilled  play- 
ers of  chess  or  "  auction-bridge  "  are  to  be  found  through- 
out hospitals  for  mental  disease.  From  aptness  at  "  slap- 
jack "  to  the  mastery  of  chess,  it  is  doubtful  if  there  is 
any  accomplishment,  any  "  ability,"  whose  possession 
gives  an  adequate  token  of  what  is  called  mental  balance. 

The  writer  has  made  some  quantitative  studies  that 
bear  on  this  point.  The  choice  reactions  of  laboratory 
experiment  are  adaptations  whose  fitness  is  a  "  conven- 
tion "  of  the  experiment.  It  is  made,  for  example,  a 
proper  reaction  for  the  subject  to  tap  with  his  thumb 
when  he  sees  a  figure  "  i  "  exposed ;  with  his  forefinger 

10  Hollingworth,  "Vocational  Psychology"  (1916).  The  Conduct 
of  the  Mind  Series. 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES    343 

to  the  figure  "  2,"  etc.  In  such  experiments  subjects 
make  mistakes  now  and  then,  just  as  the  wrong  key  on 
the  typewriter  is  struck  with  perfect  knowledge  of  the 
right  key.  These  "  false  reactions,"  as  the  experimental- 
ist calls  them,  are  failures  of  adjustment  to  the  situation, 
just  as  it  is  a  failure  of  adjustment  for  an  animal  to  look 
for  his  food  in  a  green  compartment  when  it  is  being 
trained  to  look  for  it  in  a  red  one.  Only  in  the  man's 
case  the  falseness  of  the  reaction  is  conventional,  while 
in  the  animal's  it  is  vital.  The  idea  in  the  writer's  ex- 
periments was  to  devise  various  choice-reaction  methods, 
and  see  whether  the  failure  of  psychopathic  subjects  to 
make  a  normal  adjustment  to  life  was  in  any  way  re- 
flected by  a  corresponding  failure  to  make  these  conven- 
tionalized adaptations  as  efficiently  as  the  normal  person. 
It  would  lead  far  afield  to  describe  apparatus  or  experi- 
ments in  detail,  but  five  experimental  procedures  are  in- 
volved in  them,  whose  general  features  are  as  follows : 

Experiment  (20).  A  number  consisting  of  five  figures  is 
presented  to  the  subject,  one  of  which  is  underscored,  such 
as  25413.  He  is  to  strike  the  corresponding  one  of  five 
telegraph  keys. 

Experiment  (10).  A  number  of  five  figures  is  presented 
to  the  subject,  and  he  is  to  strike  each  one  of  the  five  tele- 
graph keys  in  the  order  which  the  number  indicates. 

Experiment  (50).  Instead  of  five  figures,  a  succession  of 
the  five  vowels  is  presented,  as  o  e  i  u  a.  Each  vowel  is 
represented  by  its  proper  telegraph  key,  and  the  subject 
strikes  in  order  as  the  succession  indicates. 

Experiment  (no).  Simple  additions  are  presented  to 
the  subject,  sometimes  right  and  sometimes  wrong.  If  the 
sum  is  right,  he  strikes  a  key  at  his  right  hand ;  if  it  is  wrong, 
he  strikes  one  at  his  left  hand. 

Experiment  (100).  Simple  statements  are  shown  to  the 
subject,  which  sometimes  are  correct,  and  sometimes  incor- 
rect. If  a  statement  is  correct,  he  strikes  the  right-hand 
key  ;  if  incorrect,  he  strikes  the  left-hand  key. 


MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

Each  experimental  series  consists  of  twenty-five  sepa- 
rate observations,  and  results  may  be  presented  for  an 
initial  series  taken  with  each  of  seventeen  subjects.  Six 
of  these  are  normal  individuals,  and  eleven  pathological. 
The  essential  results  are  the  time  of  the  choice-reactions, 
and  the  number  of  mistakes  made. 

There  appears  to  be  no  characteristic  difference  between 
normal  and  pathological  individuals  in  these  results.  But 
a  suggestion  is  afforded  by  the  relation  between  the  reac- 
tion-times in  series  no  and  series  100.  Thus,  the  patho- 
logical subjects  know  as  well  as  the  normal  that  eight 
and  nine  do  not  make  eighteen ;  they  do  not  know  as  read- 
ily as  the  normal  that  horses  eat  grass.  In  the  patho- 
logical records,  without  regard  to  diagnosis,  the  discrim- 
ination of  true  and  false  statements  of  natural  fact  (se- 
ries 100)  takes  relatively  longer  than  the  discrimination 
in  statements  of  mathematical  fact  (series  no).  This 
result  suggests  a  criterion  of  vital  adaptations  on  the  basis 
of  efficiency  in  the  laboratory  adaptations  of  "  choice  re- 
action." 

Other  attempts  to  analyze  temperament  and  mental  bal- 
ance experimentally  go  beyond  the  notions  of  good  and 
poor  performance  in  these  experiments.  In  the  scales, 
and  the  tests  for  vocational  guidance,  the  experimental 
results  are  regularly  expressed  in  terms  of  how  much, 
how  quickly  and  how  accurately.  One  "  passes  "  a  test 
partly  or  wholly.  In  the  methods  now  to  be  considered, 
the  significance  lies  not  in  how  much,  how  quickly  or  how 
accurately,  i.e.,  amount;  speed;  accuracy;  but  how,  in 
•what  manner,  i.e.,  content  and  quality.  Consider  for  ex- 
ample a  free  association-test  in  which  the  stimulus  word 
true  is  given.  The  subject  is  to  respond  with  the  "  first 
ivvord  it  makes  him  think  of."  Subject  X  responds  blue; 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES  245 

time,  two  seconds.  Subject  Y  responds  Leonidas;  time 
also  two  seconds.  Given  in  an  equal  time,  Leonidas  de- 
notes more  knowledge  and  reflection,  and  could  reason- 
ably be  assigned  a  higher  ethical  value;  if  we  compared 
the  responses  by  their  intrinsic  merit,  few  could  fail  to 
regard  Leonidas  as  the  better.  But  from  many  studies 
of  association  responses,  as  we  shall  later  see,  it  appears 
that  prominence  of  this  type  of  response  often  denotes  a 
not  well  balanced  personality.20 

The  association  methods,  and  those  involving  what  is 
called  measurement  by  relative  position,  have  been  cited 
as  those  best  suited  to  discussion  from  this  angle.  Ex- 
cept for  a  few  incidental  aids,  they  make  up  the  present 
laboratory  apparatus  of  dynamic  psychology,  as  it  relates 
to  the  higher  functions  of  mental  balance.  In  both  "  as- 
sociation "  and  "  relative  position  "  methods  the  results 
may,  and  should,  denote  "  better  "  or  "  worse  "  features 
in  the  subject's  personality.  But  to  do  this  best  (qual- 
ity) is  not  part  of  the  given  experimental  task,  as  is  the 
case  in  most  mental  tests.  The  subject  is  not  told  what 
is  the  proper  type  of  response  in  the  association  experi- 
ment, and  then  told  to  approximate  it  as  closely  as  he  can. 
The  purpose  of  the  experiment  is  to  find  how  closely  he 
approaches,  of  his  own  accord,  the  proper  type  of  re- 
sponse. It  would  defeat  the  purpose  to  tell  him  what  the 
correct  principle  in  judging  the  relative  gravity  of  dif- 
ferent offenses  was,  and  then  have  him  rate  the  offenses 
in  order  of  gravity.  He  is  asked  in  what  order  they 
seem  to  come  in  gravity,  and  we  see  how  closely  this 
order  comes  to  that  of  persons  having  a  normal  sense  of 
right  and  wrong. 

20  The  precise  meaning  of  mental  balance  is  developed  in  the  next 
chapter. 


346  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

To  make  intelligent  use  of  these  experimental  methods 
one  must  understand  the  principles  on  which  their  special 
interpretation  rests  as  well  as  peculiar  sources  of  error 
in  them.  If  one  wishes  to  measure  a  person's  memory, 
one  gives  him  experimental  material  to  remember,  and 
sees  how  well  he  remembers  it.  If  we  wish  to  know  a 
person's  reaction-time  we  measure  with  a  chronoscope, 
reading  to  thousandths  of  a  second,  what  time  it  takes 
him  to  lift  his  hand  on  hearing  a  given  sound.  We  can- 
not conceive  objective  measures  like  these  for  a  person's 
kindliness,  merit  as  a  psychologist,  or  literary  ability. 
But  it  is  plain  that  people  differ  in  these  qualities,  and  that 
some  are  more  like  one  another  in  these  respects  than 
are  others. 

Shakespeare  and  Milton  are  more  alike  in  liter- 
ary merit  than  either  is  like  Sir  William  Davenant. 
They  have  made  great  impressions  on  the  minds  of  men, 
while  their  less  known  colleague  has  made  but  a  slight 
one.  Measurement  by  relative  position  is  based  upon 
considering  that  Milton  is  a  greater  poet  than  Davenant 
through  the  fact  that  he  has  thus  more  greatly  impressed 
his  fellow  men.  Again,  if  Shakespeare  is  a  greater  poet 
than  Milton,  this  simply  means  that  most  people  who 
know  them  both  consider  him  so. 

Measurement  by  relative  position  consists  in  syste- 
matic comparisons  of  this  kind.  Accordingly,  to  compare 
the  literary  merits  of  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Donne,  Burns, 
Lyndesay,  Crabbe  and  others,  we  should  have  people  who 
know  them  well  rate  them  in  the  order  of  their  excel- 
lence. If  English  poets  were  graded  in  this  way,  there 
would  be  practical  unanimity  about  the  first  four,  and 
from  there  on  disagreements  would  increase.  Professor 
Cattell  had  ten  leading  psychologists  grade  fifty  of  their 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES    247 

colleagues  in  this  way.21  It  was  found  that  all  the  ten 
put  the  same  man  at  the  head,  and  that  disagreement  be- 
came greater  as  the  lower  places  in  the  scale  were  reached. 
This  leading  man  was  certainly  the  greatest  American 
psychologist.  About  his  most  eminent  colleagues  there 
was  more  uncertainty;  but  their  positions  and  the  cer- 
tainty with  which  they  belonged  in  them  could  be  calcu- 
lated from  the  ratings  assigned  them  by  their  fellows. 
Estimates  were  obtained  of  American  men  of  letters, 
from  twenty  persons  qualified  to  judge.22  The  rankings 
were  as  follows : 

NAME  AVERAGE  POSITION  PROBABLE  ERROR 

Hawthorne  2.5  .21 

Poe  2.6  .25 

Emerson  2.g  .37 

Lowell  44  -35 

Longfellow  5.1  .25 

Irving  5.7  .31 

Bryant  7.1  .35 

Thoreau  7.9  .37 

Holmes  8.1  .21 

Cooper  8.4  .33 

Ten  of  Poe's  stories  were  rated  as  follows  by  forty 
women  undergraduate  students : 

TITLE  AVERAGE  POSITION    PROBABLE  ERROR 

The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher  3.6  .26 

The  Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue  4.0  .35 

Ligeia  4.1  .22 

The  Purloined  Letter  4.6  .53 

William  Wilson  5.1  .24 

The  Telltale  Heart  5.8  .30 

The  Cask  of  Amontillado  6.0  .38 

Metzengerstein  6.6  .26 

Loss  of  Breath  7.1  .30 

Lc  Due  de  L'Omelette  7.7  .32 

It  must  not  be  lost  sight  of,  however,  that  such  data 
as  these  measure,  not  Poe's  stories  themselves,  but  other 

21  Statistics  of  American  Psychologists,"  Am.  J.  Psychol.  14  (1903), 
310-328. 

22  Wells,  "Archives  of  Psychology,"  No.  7  (1907),  30. 


248  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

people's  reactions  to  them.  We  measure  the  value  of 
Foe's  stories  only  in  so  far  as  we  take  other  people's  re- 
actions to  them  as  the  criterion  of  their  value.23  Now  to 
the  psychologist  it  is  no  great  matter  whether  "  Le  Due  de 
L'Omelette  "  is  or  is  not  a  better  story  than  "  The  Mur- 
ders in  the  Rue  Morgue."  But  since  the  normal  judg- 
ment is  tremendously  in  favor  of  the  latter,  it  is  evidence 
of  abnormal  literary  judgment  to  grade  "  Le  Due  de 
L'Omelette  "  as  superior.  Whoever  considered  Marston 
a  greater  poet  than  Spenser  would  show  an  abnormal 
mental  reaction.  Thus  these  measurements  indicate  the 
normality  of  persons'  mental  reactions.  The  method  is 
here  of  greater  significance  for  what  it  reveals  about  those 
who  judge  them,  than  for  its  valuation  of  the  things 
judged. 

This  feature  of  the  method  —  measuring  the  mental 
reactions  of  the  graders  rather  than  the  things  graded  — 
was  more  prominent  in  one  of  the  earlier  studies,  that  of 
F.  B.  Sumner,24  than  in  many  which  followed  it,25  when 
interest  centered  rather  on  perfecting  the  method  as  an 
instrument.  Sumner  caused  one  hundred  persons  to  ar- 
range twenty-five  propositions  in  order  of  confidence  of 
definite  beliefs.  Upon  some,  as  whether  George  Wash- 
ington ever  lived,  every  one  would  hold  a  definite  opinion ; 
upon  others,  as  whether  there  would  be  frost  in  New 
York  City  September  following,  few  people  would  hold 
a  definite  opinion.  Without  reproducing  Sumner's  anal- 
yses in  detail,  the  general  order  of  certainty  in  the  beliefs 
was  as  follows: 

23 Cf.  Hollingworth,  "Vocational  Psychology,"  148. 

^Psychol.  Rev.  5  (1898),  616-631. 

25  For  a  comprehensive  review,  with  many  original  data,  cf.  Holling- 
\vorth,  "  Empirical  Studies  in  Judgment,"  Arch,  of  Psycho!.  29  (1913), 
Up.  (Bibliography.) 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES  2*9 

AVERAGE  POSITION  YES  No 

1.  Do  two  plus  two  equal  four? 17       100       o 

2.  Are  there  other  human  minds  besides  your  own?    3.9        100       o 

3.  Did  George  Washington  live  ? 4.1        100        o 

4.  Am  I  awake  at  the  present  moment,  i.e.,  not 

merely  dreaming  ?  4.2  100  o 

5.  Is  the  earth  round  ?   47  95  5 

6.  Will  the  sun  rise  to-morrow  ?  6.0  100  o 

7.  Does  the  present  life  alone   furnish   sufficient 

motives  for  moral  conduct? 9.1          74      26 

8.  Does  the  moon's  attraction  cause  the  tides  ? 9.4         97        i 

9.  Is  matter  ever  created  or  destroyed? 10.2         86      n 

10.  Is  the  evolution  of  living  beings  a  fact? 10.2         95        5 

11.  Will  poetry  always  be  held  in  high  regard  by  the 

most  cultivated  minds?  12.1          98        2 

12.  Is  the  world  becoming  better? 12.1          96        4 

13.  Is    a    man's    conduct    determined    entirely    by 

heredity  and  the  circumstances  of  his  life?    12.1          37      61 

14.  Will  the  most  honest  man  you  know  be  honest 

ten  years  hence  ?  13.1          98        o 

15.  Is  the  scientific  mind  as  truly  creative  as  the 

artistic  ? 13.6          48      52 

16.  Do  any  landscape  paintings  yield  so  much  satis- 

faction as  the  finer  natural  scenes? 13.6          26      71 

17.  Would  a  college  education  be,  on  the  whole,  an 

advantage  to  the  majority  of  young  men?  14.0          73      26 

18.  Do  spirits  of  the  departed  ever   communicate 

with  living  persons?     (We  refer  only  to 

modern  times.)   14.9          14      80 

19.  Would  this  continent  have  become  as  quickly 

civilized  if  it  had  remained  colonial? 15.5          n      87 

20.  Is  the  protective  tariff  a  wise  policy   for  the 

United  States  ?  15.6         49      50 

21.  Will  the  death  penalty  for  murder  always  be  held 

justifiable  among  civilized  people? 16.4  33  61 

22.  Will  our  Republic  endure  another  hundred  years?  16.6  93  5 

23.  Is  there  life  on  other  heavenly  bodies? 19.8  ,       62  27 

24.  Will  there  be  frost  in  New  York  City  September 

next?  21.8         24      55 

25.  Is  there  an  even  number  of  persons  in  New  York 

City?   25.0  o        o 

That  is,  most  of  the  people  were  surer  about  two  and 
two  making  four  than  about  any  of  the  other  things.  But 
not  every  one  was  surest  of  it,  for  then  its  position  would 
have  been  i.o  instead  of  1.7.  Everybody  is  least  certain 
about  the  number  of  persons  in  New  York  City. 
Whether  our  nation  will  last  until  1998  appeared  some- 
what less  certain  than  whether  the  world  was  growing 


250  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

better.  Men  as  a  class  were  more  certain  than  women 
about  the  sum  of  two  and  two,  about  the  existence  of 
other  human  minds,  about  the  cause  of  the  tides,  as  to 
the  advantage  of  college  for  young  men,  and  the  wis- 
dom of  a  protective  tariff.  The  results  bring  out  neatly 
that  unanimity  in  a  belief  may  be  quite  out  of  proportion 
to  its  certainty.  Most  people  think  the  world  is  becom- 
ing better,  that  honesty  is  permanent,  and  that  the  Repub- 
lic will  endure.  But  their  opinions  are  not  so  certain 
as  about  things  showing  more  disagreement.  His  sub- 
jects disagree  much  as  to  whether  the  present  life  provides 
adequate  motives  for  moral  conduct,  but  they  are  surer  of 
the  opinion  they  do  hold. 

Such  observations  are  clearly  of  "  mental  "  reactions  in 
the  narrower  sense  of  the  term.  They  do  not  aim  to  go 
beyond  telling  us  how  people  think  about  their  fellow 
psychologists,  about  American  men  of  letters,  about  the 
existence  of  life  on  other  planets.  For  this  information 
to  be  practically  effective,  those  who  hold  beliefs  should 
act  in  some  consistent  way  with  what  they  think,  or,  more 
strictly,  tell  us  that  they  think.  That  this  is  not  wholly 
the  case  is  a  common  observation.  It  would  not  so  much 
matter  that  actions  speak  louder  than  words,  but  they 
are  so  apt  to  say  different  things.  The  mechanism  of 
dissociation  provides  amply  for  a  man's  honestly  rating 
Hawthorne  as  the  greatest  American  writer,  and,  through 
unconscious  motives,  spending  most  of  his  time  reading 
Thoreau. 

To  judge  of  a  subject's  personality  on  the  basis  of 
gradings  like  these,  it  is  necessary  to  know  how  far  his 
ideas  thus  expressed  are  reflected  in  his  conduct.  The 
existence  of  people  on  other  planets  is  not  put  to  any  test 
of  action,  and  we  only  have  the  subject's  word  for  the 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES    251 

actuality  of  his  belief.  On  the  other  hand,  people  may 
be  afraid  of  ghosts,  who  do  not  "  believe  "  in  them;  like 
the  astronomers  who  rightly  predict  eclipses,  and  believe 
eclipses  to  result  from  a  dragon's  swallowing  the  sun. 
There,  one  belief  is  expressed  in  thought,  but  another  in 
action.  Action  is  the  proper  test ;  "  Not  he  that  saith 
unto  me,  Lord,  Lord."  The  source  of  error  in  measure- 
ment by  relative  position  is,  that  it  is  limited  to  an  ex- 
pression of  the  conscious  judgment.  This  is  a  basic 
source  of  error  in  the  application  of  all  laboratory  psy- 
chology to  actual  life.  With  examinations  like  those  of 
the  oculist,  it  is  not  serious.  The  lens  which  seems  the 
best  in  the  oculist's  examining  room  will  regularly  be  the 
best  in  practice.  In  weightier  and  more  personal  passages 
of  life,  the  role  of  the  unconscious  in  determining  actions 
becomes  greater.  It  is  necessary,  therefore,  to  see  how 
one's  reactions  in  relative  position  measurement  fit  with 
corresponding  reactions  in  the  test  of  life. 

Two  kinds  of  observations  with  relative  position  have 
been  made  which  lie  nearer  to  a  test  of  action  than  those 
above  mentioned.  One  concerns  the  moral  sense. 

It  has  long  been  recognized  that  offenses  differ  in  their 
gravity  or  heinousness,  are  susceptible,  indeed,  of  quanti- 
tative scaling  in  magnitude  — 

"  It's  wrong  to  murder  babies,  little  corals  for  to  fleece, 
But  sins  like  these  one  expiates  at  half-a-crown  apiece." 

Moral  sense  is  measurable  by  relative  position;  moral 
conduct  according  to  one's  social  adaptations.  Does  an 
inferiority  in  moral  conduct  show  a  corresponding  inferi- 
ority in  moral  sense  ? 

My  former  colleague,  Dr.  G.  G.  Fernald.  drew  up  a 
series  of  ten  offenses,  and  had  them  rated  in  order  of 


252  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

gravity  by  three  groups  of  persons.  One  group  consisted 
of  a  hundred  reformatory  boys  and  young  men,20  the 
second,  of  twelve  normal  students  of  a  manual  training 
school,  the  third  of  "  fifteen  persons  of  mature  judgment 
and  of  some  experience  with  offenders  and  their  offenses." 
His  results  were  as  follows : 

AVERAGE  POSITIONS 

Ref.         School      Adult 
Group        Group      Group 

1.  To  take  two  or  three  apples   from 

another  man's  orchard 2.69  1.66  i.oo 

2.  To  take  a  cent  from  a  blind  man's  cup  3.04  3.10  2.73 

3.  To  break  windows  for  fun 4.13  3.25  3.53 

4.  To  throw  hot  water  on  a  cat  or  in 

any  other  way  cause  it  to  suffer 

needlessly  4.80  4.42  3.80 

5.  To  break  into  a  building  to  rob  it  ...     5.55  5.83  5.60 

6.  To  take  money  as  "  Graft "  or  "  Rake- 

Off  "   when    you    are   a   city   or 

government  official   6.01  5.66  5.80 

7.  To  try  to  kill  yourself  6.33  5.58  6.73 

8.  To  get  a  nice  girl  into   family  way 

and  then  leave  her 6.84  6.75  7.53 

9.  To  set  fire  to  a  house  with  people  in  it    7.21  9.60  8.60 
10.  To  shoot  to  kill  a  man  who  runs  away 

when  you  try  to  rob  him 8.33  8.33  9.66 

The  orders  are  practically  the  same  in  each  group. 
But  that  means  little,  because  with  a  large  number  of 
cases,  as  in  the  reformatory  group,  great  departures  from 
the  normal  would  balance  one  another.  The  individual's 
moral  sense  is  given  in  the  amount  of  his  own  personal 
departure  from  a  standard  to  which  he  ought  to  conform. 
We  may  see  from  Fernald's  tables  27  that  the  most  de- 
parture from  the  average  occurs  in  the  reformatory  group, 
and  the  least  in  the  normal  adult  group.  Of  the  delin- 

26  In  passing  it  may  be  noted  that  the  natural  interest  of  the  re- 
formatory group  would  lie  in  the  direction  of  showing  their  best 
moral  perceptions  in  the  test.    They  are  persons  seeking,  not  to  es- 
cape judgment  on  the  ground  of  mental  defect,  but  to  regain  a  normal 
freedom. 

27  Am.  J.  Insanity,  68  (1912),  547. 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES          253 

quents,  eight  put  suicide  in  the  place  normally  occupied  by 
taking  the  penny  from  the  blind  man's  cup.  Seven  rate 
taking  apples  from  a  man's  orchard  in  the  normal  posi- 
tion of  suicide.  Seven  give  breaking  windows  for  fun 
the  normal  position  of  seduction  and  abandonment. 
None  of  these  ratings  is  made  by  the  normal  adults,  and 
there  is  but  a  single  instance  of  one  among  the  normal 
adolescents.  These  results  show  that  the  deficiency  in 
moral  conduct  is  to  some  extent  reflected  in  a  deficiency 
of  moral  sense.  They  do  not  inform  us  how  close  the 
correspondence  is.  Only  a  much  more  detailed  compari- 
son of  the  individual's  behavior  with  his  judgments  could 
do  that. 

In  the  spring  of  1913  the  writer  made  this  experiment, 
slightly  varied,  with  a  group  of  ten  normal  women 
(nurses).  The  actual  form  of  words  used  in  the  experi- 
ment is  not  given,  but  its  purport  is  to  consider  the 
case  of  John  Smith,  aged  twenty-two,  single,  a  clerk  in 
a  corner  grocery.  The  offenses  were  to  be  scaled  accord- 
ing to  the  severity  of  punishment  which  he  would  merit 
for  them.  The  positions  were  as  follows : 

1.  Murdering  a  man  who  runs  away  when  held  up 1.7 

2.  Seduction  and  abandonment 2.1 

3.  Pouring  kerosene  on  dog  and  setting  fire  to  him 4.4 

4.  Falsely  accusing  a  fellow  employee 4.9 

5.  Overcharging  customer   5.2 

6.  Housebreaking 5.4 

7.  Taking  nickel  from  blind  man  6.1 

8.  Setting  fire  to  some  one's  empty  barn  7.5 

9.  Taking  peck  of  apples  from  orchard   8.8 

10.  Ringing  false  fire  alarm 8.9 

The  subjects  in  this  experiment  were  selected  with  re- 
gard to  their  personalities;  five  being  those  resembling  a 
certain  person  A  as  closely  as  possible,  and  five  bearing 
the  closest  resemblance  to  a  very  different  person  B. 


354  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

This  test  was  made  along  with  other  experiments  to  see 
whether  such  great  differences  in  personality  would  be  re- 
flected in  it.  They  are  not.  The  A  and  B  groups  do 
not  tend  to  grade  particular  offenses  higher  or  lower. 
The  conscious  surface  of  character  reached  in  these  ex- 
perimental judgments  does  not  include  the  forces  that 
determine  the  differences  in  personality. 

In  estimating,  three  years  after  the  experiments,  how 
well  these  subjects  are  adjusted,  the  original  A  and  B 
groups  are  divided  as  follows :  i-A,  2- A,  3- A,  4- A,  5-B, 
6-A,  7-B,  8-B,  9-B,  lo-B.  Superiority  of  the  A  group 
over  the  B  is  well  established.  Yet  those  of  the  B  group 
are  nearer  the  average  standard  in  moral  perception. 
This  is  further  evidence  that  features  making  for  a 
"  normal "  judgment  are  not  essentially  effective  in  de- 
termining mental  balance. 

This  point  is  also  brought  out  in  some  findings  of 
Haines.28  He  reports  analogous  tests  with  four  groups 
of  women,  in  which  the  results  are  as  follows : 

AVERAGE  POSITIONS 

Normal  Delinquent 

14  16  21 

1st  Yr.  Doubtf.    High 

High     26  No   Intell.    Grade 

Sch.     Defect    Def.       Def. 

1.  Not  to  go  to  Sunday  School  and 

church  and  never  to  read  your  Bible    1.5          4.5          7-5          7-5 

2.  To  put  poison  in  the  food  of  some- 
one whom  you  dislike  2.4          1.9         2.4          1.9 

3.  To  spend  the  night  in  a  hotel  with 

some  young  man  3.5 29      2.7          1.8         2.5 

4.  To  tell  a  wicked  lie  about  some  girl    4.5          6.1          5.7          5.7 

5.  To  flirt  with  a  nice  young  man  on 

the  street  5-5         8.5         8.5         7.2 

28  "  Diagnostic  Values  of  some  Performance  Tests,"  Psychol.  Rev. 
22  (1915),  303-304- 

29  Haines  considers  that  this  is  low  because  of  failure  to  under- 
stand what  is  meant. 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES  255 

AVERAGE  POSITIONS 
Normal  Delinquent 


14 
ist  Yr. 
High 
Sch. 
6.  To  take  a  box  of  candy  from  the 
store  where  you  work  5-5 

26  No 
Defect 

5-3 

16 

Doubt  f. 
Intell. 
Def. 

5-3 

21 

High 
Grade 
Def. 

5-7 

7.  To  take  a  hair  ribbon  from  your 
employer  when  she  knows  nothing 
of  it  5-7 

5-8 

6.2 

5-9 

8.  To  get  mad  and  break  the  dishes 
when  the  woman  for  whom  you 
work  finds  fault  with  you   85 

86 

8.2 

7-5 

9.  To  throw  scalding  water  on  the  cat    9.1 
10.  To  spank  the  baby  because  you  are 
out  of  oatience  .                                  0.3 

7-5 
8.1 

7-4 
8.7 

7-5 
7.3 

The  orders  vary  more  here  than  in  the  groups  reported 
by  Fernald,  and  the  steps  between  the  offenses  are  not 
so  great.  Considerable  discrepancies  between  moral  per- 
ception and  moral  conduct  appear.  It  is  not  probable  that 
the  ratings  of  the  high  school  girls  correspond  with  their 
actual  standards  of  conduct.  These  are  determined  by 
forces  that  do  not  gain  expression  in  the  experiment. 
Haines'  results  indeed  would  make  moral  sense  nearly 
useless  for  the  estimate  of  standards  of  conduct.  G.  G. 
Fernald,  however,  puts  it  among  his  "  tests  retained," 
and  Healy  looks  on  it  not  without  favor  when  the  lan- 
guage difficulty  is  obviated  through  pictures.  His  criti- 
cisms are  pertinent :  "  For  instance,  the  killing  of  a 
moose  may  be  looked  at  from  the  standpoint  of  a  hungry 
woodsman,  of  a  game  warden,  or  of  a  nature  lover  like 
Thoreau."  The  most  these  experiments  can  do  is  to  re- 
flect the  conscious,  which  does  not  search  the  fundamental 
springs  of  action. 

A  closer  comparison  of  relative  position  measurement 
with  the  test  of  action  has  been  made  in  the  study  of  ad- 
vertising material.  If  one  can  tell  by  preliminary  relative 
position  measurements  what  advertising  copy  is  best, 


256  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

much  saving  of  advertising  expense  results.  To  measure 
by  relative  position  the  quality  of  an  advertisement,  one 
takes  a  number  of  advertisements,  of  a  popular  soap,  for 
example,  and  causes  subjects  to  rate  them  in  the  order 
in  which  the  advertisements  would  cause  them  to  buy  the 
soap.  One  could  not,  of  course,  measure  how  closely  this 
represented  the  real  order  in  which  the  advertisements 
would  induce  these  subjects  to  buy  the  soap.  It  remained 
to  compare  the  advertisements  by  the  amount  of  business 
they  produced.  Both  Hollingworth  and  E.  K.  Strong 
have  made  comparisons  of  this  nature,  which  indicate  that 
the  order  in  which  the  subjects  think  they  would  respond 
to  the  advertisements  in  the  experiments  shows  a  distinct- 
correspondence  with  the  order  in  which  the  public  re- 
sponds by  buying.  But  the  correspondence  is  not  com- 
plete. What  are  the  influences  that  disturb  it?  First, 
there  are  many  factors,  familiar  to  the  business  expert, 
which  make  it  hard  to  gauge  the  volume  of  business  pro- 
duced by  a  definite  advertisement.  Second,  those  who 
rate  the  advertisements  may  not  be  fair  representatives  of 
the  buying  public.  While  these  objections  are  practically 
important,  neither  invalidates  the  method.  On  the  one 
hand,  there  are  ways  of  advertising  and  selling  that  give 
quite  accurate  returns;  on  the  other,  a  wise  selection  of 
graders  obviates  the  difficulty.  Third,  the  factors  which 
make  us  rate  an  advertisement  first  in  persuasiveness  may 
not  be  the  ones  that  really  make  us  buy.  The  more  we 
eliminate  the  other  two  difficulties,  the  nearer  we  approach 
to  measuring  this  fundamental  one.  The  fairest  test  of 
the  method  is  under  conditions  where  sales  or  inquiries 
can  most  certainly  be  referred  to  definite  advertising 
material.  Where  the  purchaser  may  have  seen  a  dozen 
different  advertisements  of  the  same  product,  and  may 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES  257 

buy  it  in  any  number  of  different  stores,  this  is  next  to 
impossible.  Only  where  appeal  and  response  are  on  the 
"  direct  by  mail "  plan,  are  advertisements  capable  of 
the  most  accurate  testing.  Then  we  know  best  what  ap- 
peals have  been  made  and  what  responses  received  to  each. 
A  practical  illustration  of  this  is  shown  in  a  business 
house  sending  out  sales  letters  to  a  mailing  list  of  some 
20,000  names.  They  will  first  try  out  different  sales 
letters  with  a  smaller  group  of  names.  A  letter  must  yield 
adequate  results  in  this  testing  before  being  sent  to  the 
larger  list.  It  has  been  said  that  a  testing  list  of  500 
names  is  sufficient  for  the  purposes  involved. 

Adams30  has  compared  the  relative  position  merit  of 
advertisements  with  the  number  of  inquiries  they  produce. 
The  advertising  itself  appears  not  to  have  been  "  direct 
by  mail,"  but  of  the  magazine  type.  The  number  of 
graders  was  161.  As  the  test  in  action  was,  here,  the 
number  of  inquiries,  not  the  number  of  sales,  it  was 
fitting  that  the  laboratory  test  should  also  be  of  persuasive- 
ness toward  answering  the  advertisement  rather  than 
toward  buying  the  goods.  Three  sets  of  advertisements 
were  used.  For  the  set  showing  the  clearest  differences 
in  merit  there  was  a  corresponding  difference  in  the  num- 
ber of  inquiries  produced.  In  one  of  the  remaining  two 
sets  a  fairly  reliable  order  of  laboratory  merit  was  ob- 
tained. In  the  other,  the  graders  disagreed  a  good  deal. 
These  latter  two  arrangements  both  showed  a  negative 
relation  to  the  number  of  replies;  that  is,  the  advertise- 
ments thought  to  be  better  did  not  bring  so  many  answers. 
The  most  interesting  discrepancy  of  the  laboratory  and 

80 "The  Adequacy  of  the  Laboratory  Test  in  Advertising." 
Psychol.  Rev.  22  (1915),  402-422.  Adams'  more  extensive  work. 
"Advertising  and  Its  Mental  Laws"  (Macmillan),  appears  as  this 
volume  is  in  press. 

18 


258  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

the  action  tests  concerns  two  advertisements  in  different 
sets,  of  which  one  covered  the  full  page  with  a  return- 
coupon,  and  the  other  was  identically  worded,  but  covered 
a  half-page  with  no  return-coupon.  Each  of  these  ad- 
vertisements was  ranked  by  the  graders  the  poorest  of 
its  group.  That  is,  the  return-coupon  did  not  alter  the 
position  of  the  advertisements  in  the  laboratory  test.  In 
the  action  test,  the  advertisement  having  the  return-coupon 
was  the  best  of  its  group,  not  only  in  number  of  inquiries, 
but  in  cost  per  inquiry  and  in  profit.  Its  half -page  replica 
without  the  return-coupon  was  the  worst  of  its  group  in 
number  of  inquiries  and  in  cost  per  inquiry  and  next  to 
worst  in  profit.  The  return-coupon  appealed  to  motives 
most  effective  for  action,  but  which  did  not  come  to  the 
surface  in  the  laboratory  test. 

At  its  best,  a  "  relative  position  "  experiment  tells  us  as 
much  as  self-examination  reveals  about  men's  principles 
and  probable  conduct.  This  is  somewhat  in  accord  with 
actual  conduct,  but  not  wholly  so.  Important  trends  of 
conduct  are  not  in  consciousness  and  do  not  appear  to  self- 
examination.  They  produce  apparent  discrepancies  and 
inconsistencies  between  thought  and  conduct.  By  com- 
paring its  results  with  the  test  of  action,  we  observe  how 
important  such  unconscious  forces  are  in  the  persons  we 
study.  For  the  return-coupon  advertisement,  they  were 
very  important. 

The  "  association  "  experiments  have  little  in  common 
with  "  relative  position  "  measurements,  except  for  shar- 
ing with  them  a  primacy  among  measures  of  the  higher 
mental  adjustments.  Association  experiments  are  practi- 
cally confined  to  language  material,  and  depend  on  normal 
ability  in  the  use  of  language.  They  measure  the  lan- 
guage reactions  of  the  subject  under  more  or  less  stand- 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES    259 

ardized  conditions.  A  "  stimulus  "-word  may  be  spoken 
to  the  subject,  and  he  is  to  respond  as  soon  as  possible  by 
speaking  a  word  that  stands  in  a  certain  relation  to  it. 
In  one  type  of  experiment,  the  response  is  to  be  the  op- 
posite of  the  stimulus-word,  like  white,  black.  In  an- 
other, the  stimulus-word  is  a  verb,  and  the  response  must 
fit  an  object  to  it,  like  pull,  ivagon.  Various  relations  of 
this  sort  can  be  used.31  They  are  called  controlled  asso- 
ciation tests,  because  the  relation  of  the  response  to  the 
stimulus-word  is  quite  restricted.  The  "  opposites  "  test, 
which  is  the  easiest,  has  found  special  use  in  tests  of  in- 
telligence, as  this  function  is  reflected  in  one's  ability  with 
language. 

Another,  and  for  the  present  purpose  more  significant, 
type  of  association  experiments,  is  called  the  free  associ- 
ation test.32  Here  the  subject  is  instructed,  in  effect,  to 
respond  with  the  first  word  suggested  by  the  stimulus- 
word.  One  is  soon  struck  by  the  fact  that  this  takes 
longer  than  when  the  response  is  more  restricted.  It  takes 
less  time  to  give  the  opposite  of  slow  than  to  give  the  first 
thing  it  suggests.  Because  so  many  responses  might  fit 
the  experiment,  there  is  more  rivalry  between  them  and 
they  block  one  another.  In  general,  the  time  is  longer 
for  women  than  for  men.  A  normal  time  of  free  associ- 
ation response  is  about  two  seconds;  knowledge  of  the 
speed  of  mental  processes  testifies  that  this  is  a  liberal 
allowance.  Sometimes  the  free  association  time  is  as 
much  as  five  or  ten  seconds  and  more.  In  such  cases  it 
is  clear  that  mental  blocking  faa§  tajtenjrjace.  Pei-hans 

81  For  a  review  of  tlicni.  cf.  "Association  Tcsis,"  Ps\clwl.  Monng. 
57  (tqn),  85. 

3- Happerty  and  Kempf  have  made  an  interesting  use  of  controlled 
association  tests  in  functions  more  usually  assigned  to  the  free  as- 
sociation test.  Am.  7.  Psycho!.  24  (1913),  414-425. 


260  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

the  ideas  coming  up  have  been  such  as  the  subject  does 
not  wish  to  express. 

This  experiment  has,  in  fact,  become  most  popularly 
known  as  a  possible  means  for  the  detection  of  wrong- 
doers, but  research  has  not  wholly  encouraged  this  inter- 
pretation.33 

While  it  hardly  gives  an  objective  method  for  estab- 
lishing guilty  knowledge,  it  yields  striking  information 
about  the  trends  of  thought  in  the  mind.  The  arousal 
of  an  emotionally  colored  trend  in  the  association  experi- 
ment has  been  found  to  be  accompanied  by  more,  or  fewer, 
of  numerous  symptoms,  the  following  enumeration  of 
which  is  adapted  from  Pfister : 34 

A.  EXTERNAL. 

1.  Bodily  manifestations :     Clearing  throat,  stammering,  gesture  be- 
fore or  after  the  response,  twitching,  tears,  sighing,  psychogalvanic 
reflex,35  pulse  change,  etc. 

2.  Immediate  correction  of  the  response,  after  utterance  or  at  its 
beginning. 

3.  Lengthened  reaction  time,  i.e.,  reaction  times  above  the  subject's 
median  (not  average)  time  for  the  series.     (This  is  rather  too  wide.) 

B   INTERNAL. 

1.  Misunderstanding  of  the  stimulus-word. 

2.  A  response  consisting  of  : 

(a)  Naming  an  object  in  sight,  as  window, 

(b)  Translations  into  a  foreign  language. 

(c)  Repetition  of  the  stimulus-word. 

(d)  Minor  change  of  the  stimulus-word;  as,  sick,  sickly. 

(e)  Sound  associations,  as  rhymes. 

(f)  Stilted  reactions. 

(g)  "  Perseveratipns  " ;  the  response  is  relevant  not  to  the 
immediate  stimulus-word,  but  to  one  already  given. 

83  Cf.  the  comprehensive  review  of  Rittershaus,  "  Die  Komplex- 
forschung,"  Journ.  f.  Psych,  u.  Neural.  15  (1910),  61-83,  184-220; 
16  (1910),  1-43.  (Bibliography.)  Also,  "Zur  Frage  der  Komplex- 
forschung,"  Arch.  f.  d.  Ges.  Psychol.  28  (1913),  324-335,  and  Crane, 
"  A  Study  in  Association  and  Reaction  Time,"  Psychol.  Monog.  Bo 
(1915),  61. 

3<  D.  /wo.  Met.,  285-286. 

85  (a)  A  change  in  the  relative  potential  of  different  parts  of  the 
body;  (b)  a  diminution  of  resistance  in  the  body,  ensuing  upon  a 
stimulus  that  arouses  a  special  emotional  reaction. 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES          261 

(h)  "Failure  of  reproduction";  the  subject  cannot,  after 
the  series  is  completed,  remember  the  response  to  a 
given  stimulus-word,  or  gives  some  other  without  try- 
ing to  remember. 


These  are  called  "  complex  indicatory  "  fry  tfrose  who 

formulated  them.  No  one  of  them  is  a  certain  or  essen- 
tial symptom,  and  little  significance  in  this  respect  should 
attach  to  any  association  accompanied  by  less  than  two  30 
which  are  functionally  independent. 

The  more  of  these  symptoms  an  individual  shows  in 
an  association  record,  the  greater  the  indications  of  un- 
balanced affect  in  the  personality.  But  these  observa- 
tions  have  been  used  more  to  bring  out  the  existence  of 
certain  special  emotional  "  complexes  "  in  patients  than 
for  a  general  diagnosis  of  mental  balance.  The  most  im- 
portant observations  on  this  point  deal  with  a  feature  of 
the  response-words.  There  is  a  class  of  responses  called 
the  predicate  or  egocentric  type  of  responses.  The  true- 
Leoniaas  above  cited  is  an  example  of  them.37  In  normal 
persons,  from  15  to  45  per  cent  of  associative  responses 
belong  to  this  group."  "  "Smgle  series  have  been  taken  with 
as  low  as  2  per  cent  and  as  high  as  60  per  cent;  but  the 
number  of  these  is  a  fairly  constant  attribute  of  the  indi- 
vidual.38 The  number  of  these  "  egocentric  "  associ- 
ations has  been  thought,  with  reason,  to  bear  a  peculiar  re- 
lation to  the  subject's  general  personality.  It  has  not 
yet  been  formulated  quite  acceptably.  Says  Jung  : 

According  to  my  experience,  this  association  type  is 
important  for  the  diagnosis  of  an  inadequate  transference 

88  Cf,  Dooley,  "  Correlation  of  Normal  Complexes,"  Am.  J.  Psychol. 
27  (1916),  esp.  131-139- 

87  For  a  full  definition  of  the  category,  cf.  Psychol.  Rev.  18  (1911), 
229-233- 

38  "The  Question  of  Association  Types,"  Psychol.  Rev.  19  (1912), 
253-270. 


262  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

of  affect  to  the  sexual  object.  The  personality  of  this  type 
projects,  in  an  evident  manner,  a  tremendous  amount  of 
affect  upon  the  outer  world,  and  he  shows  these  feelings  in 
the  unadmitted,  but  none  the  less  transparent,  endeavor  to 
awaken  a  sympathetic  feeling  in  the  experimenter.  .  .  . 
Jahrb.  f.  psa.  u.  psp.  Forsch.  (1909),  157. 


Ferenczi : 

A 

*  The  healthy  person  answers  promptly,  with  a  logically  or 
phonetically  associated  response.  But  with  the  neurotic, 
the  nnhala^gtjl  flflFWflp  take  possession  of  the_stinTulus^-word, 
and  seek  tq  exploitit  in  their  own  se'nse.  ...  It  is  not  the 
stimulus-words  \vT^TTaTb^ise'lnT"affectful  reaction,  but  the 
hungry  affects  of  the  neurotic  come  to  meet  it.  The  neu- 
rotic, so  to  speak,  "  introjects  "  the  stimulus-words.  "  In- 
trojektion  u.  Uebertragung,"  Jahrb.  f.  psa.  u.  psp.  Forsch. 
(1909),  432. 

According  to  Pfister: 

If  a  subject  makes  considerable  use  of  adjectives  with  a 
value  content  (characteristic  of  egocentric  association-type), 
he  informs  us  that  there  is  a  large  amount  of  "  floating  " 
unbalanced  energy ;  that  he  is  not  well  adapted  in  his  instinc- 
tive life.  D.  psa.  Met.,  280. 

If  these  views  are  justified,  the  egocentric  reactions  are 
an  important  criterion  of  mental  adjustment.  This  is 
abundantly  attested  in  certain  persons.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  are  certain  things  that  should  follow,  which 
do  not.39  Even  if  we  state  it  more  broadly,  that  the  ego- 
centric reaction  type  indicates  special  lack  of  balance 
somewhere  in  the  instinctive  life,  there  is  a  body  of  facts 
which  is  not  covered.  It  will  be  best  to  examine  a  cross- 
section  of  the  evidence,  and  observe  the  manner  in  which 
this  interpretation  of  the  association  test  applies  within 
the  limits  of  its  use. 

39  Notably  in  cases  of  mental  disease. 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES  263 

The  A  and  B  groups  mentioned  in  connection  with  the 
experiments  on  moral  perception  (pp.  253-254)  also  un- 
derwent an  association  test  using  the  word  list  prepared 
by  Kent  and  Rosanoff.  Arranged  in  the  order  of  egocen- 
tric responses  which  they  gave,  the  A  and  B  groups  ran : 
i,  52%,  A;  2,  44%,  B;  3,  42%,  A 54,  42%,  A 55,  41%, 
B;  6,  32%,  A;  7,  32%,  A;  8,  26%,  B;  9,  19%,  B;  10, 
9%,  B.  The  persons  A  and  B  themselves,  who  were  the 
prototypes  by  which  the  above  groups  were  selected, 
showed  in  more  extensive  experiments  47%  and  17%  of 
egocentric  reactions  respectively. 

The  investigator  was  but  little  acquainted  with  any  of 
these  subjects,  with  the  exception  of  A  and  B  themselves. 
He  did  not  know  till  after  the  experiments  had  been 
evaluated  who  were  supposed  to  resemble  A  or  B.  They 
were  selected  for  him  by  a  person  of  mature  judgment, 
not  a  psychologist,  but  who  best  combined  the  qualifica- 
tions necessary  to  make  such  a  selection.  It  was  sup- 
posed to  be  simply  on  the  basis  of  temperamental  resem- 
blance to  A  or  B.  At  the  time  of  the  experiment,  the 
investigator  made  in  eight  cases  a  note  of  the  group  to 
which  each  one  seemed  to  belong.  His  judgment  agreed 
in  seven  of  these  eight  cases  with  that  of  the  person  who 
had  selected  them.  In  one  case  there  was  disagreement. 
In  one  of  the  remaining  two  no  judgment  by  the  writer 
is  recorded. 

A  case  only  doubtfully  assigned  by  the  writer  is  No.  2 
above.  He  finds  her  to  "  resemble  A  more  than  No.  7 
does,"  without  being  clearly  put  in  either  group.  Her  as- 
sociations, with  44%  of  egocentrics,  are  characteristic  of 
the  A  group,  but  she  was  selected  as  a  B.  This  led  to 
the  question  whether,  since  human  personality  is  such  a 
compound  thing,  she  might  not  have  qualities  which  would 


264  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

produce  an  A  reaction  type  together  with  others  that  had 
caused  the  selector  to  put  her  in  the  B  group.  Further 
inquiry  develops  that  this  personality  is  indeed  not  well 
adjusted;  laughs  and  cries  with  abnormal  readiness;  fails 
to  carry  out  the  instructions  of  her  work ;  seems  to  be  al- 
ways in  a  dreamland.  This  fully  entitles  her  to  the 
high  egocentricity  of  her  responses,  on  the  hypothesis 
that  many  egocentric  responses  reflect  a  lack  of  balance 
in  the  affective  life. 

No.  5  above,  rated  as  B,  shows  more  egocentric  re- 
sponses than  characterize  a  B  personality.  When  inquiry 
develops  that  she  is  of  unhappy  disposition,  making  al- 
most no  friends,  discontented  and  blue,  this  case  must 
also  be  regarded  as  consistent  with  the  hypothesis  that 
egocentric  responses  mean  unbalanced  affects.  Though 
selected  as  B  personalities,  these  persons  possess  the  char- 
acteristics that  produce  an  A  reaction  to  the  association 
test. 

The  five  selections  to  the  A  group,  Nos.  i,  3,  4,  6,  and  7, 
show  a  number  of  egocentric  reactions  well  above  the 
average  of  a  larger  number  of  unselected  subjects.  Their 
average  would  be  not  quite  twice  as  many.  They  have 
been  uniformly  better  in  their  profession  than  the  mem- 
bers of  the  B  group.  Below  are  given  in  parallel  column 
certain  incidental  notes  which  were  taken  during  the  ex- 
periments, for  the  A  and  B  groups.  They  give  the  best 
characterizations  for  comparing  the  A  personalities  with 
theB. 

A  GROUP  B  GROUP 

(m)  Manner    subdued,    but    co-    (q)  Shyness       at      start.    Less 

operates    with    exceptional  poise  than   subject  m,  who 

readiness     and     efficiency.  was  tested  just  before  her. 

Asks    questions    indicating  Takes      much      instruction, 

some     idea     of     different  Fidgets    as    stimulus-words 

(moral)      standards,      the  are      given.    If      educated 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES          265 

judgment    is    on    personal  would  regard  as  A,  but  bc- 

opinion     of     heinousness ;  ing   uneducated,   as   B    (in 

of  possible  consequence  of          agreement  with  selector), 
so  doing. 

(n)  Is  more  subdued  than  above,    (r)  Shakes  hands   with  an  as- 
Blames  self  for  not  under-  sured     smile.    Talks    more 

standing  part  of  test  at  first.  than  others,  but  in  associa- 

Fidgets  a  good   deal  when  tion  test  has  difficulties  when 

blocked  (in  association  test).  "nothing  comes,"  at  which 

Asks    about    standards    in  times    she    does    not    get 

moral  test.  stirred   up   or  fidget   espe- 

cially. Does  not  seem  so 
bashful  as  m  and  n,  who 
were  tested  before  her. 

(p)  Catches  on  very  well.    Sub-   (s)  Is  assured  at  first,  less  so 
dued.     Clears    throat    much  later,  then  again  more  spon- 

in  association  test,  starts  to  taneous.    Is  quiet,  not  mak- 

speak,    changes    to    another  ing     unnecessary     remarks, 

word.    Spontaneously       as-  Does  not  rearrange  cards  as 

sembles  certain  cards  used  p  did.    Incline  to  B  group, 

in  assistance  to  examiner.  but  would  be  very  doubtful 

but  for  the  observation  of 
results  involved  in  record- 
ing them. 

The  general  results  are  consistent  with  the  view  that  the 
egocentric  association  type  indicates  a  greater  "  loading  " 
of  the  experiment  with  affect;  and,  as  the  affect  is  there 
to  be  loaded,  it  is  evidently  not  taken  care  of  elsewhere  in 
the  personality.  The  experiment  becomes  a  token  of  the 
amount  of  this  "  free-floating  "  affect.  It  does  not  indi- 
cate whether  the  person's  general  reaction  to  it  is  good, 
as  it  is  with  the  A  group  in  general,  or  inferior,  as  it  is 
with  Nos.  2  and  5  above. 

Jung  considers  this  free-floating  affect  to  be  of  an  erotic 
nature,  detached  from  the  sexual  object  where  it  properly 
belongs,  so  that  the  sexual  object  is  insufficiently 
"  loaded  "  with  it.  If  this  is  the  case,  we  should  expect 
sexual  adaptations  to  be  more  difficult  in  the  A  group 
than  in  the  B.  In  fact,  of  the  subjects  assigned  by  the 
writer  to  the  A  group,  not  one  has  married  (July,  1916). 
Their  prototype,  A,  herself  remains  unmarried.  Of  the 


266  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

subjects  apparently  belonging  to  the  B  group,  four  out  of 
five  have  since  married.  Their  prototype,  B,  is  also 
married. 

There  are  no  physical  differences  between  the  groups 
consistent  with  this  fact.  But  the  most  noticeable  social 
difference  between  the  A  and  B  groups  is  that  the  latter 
are  much  more  open  in  their  attitude  toward  the  opposite 
sex.  The  A  group  are  more  repressed  in  this  direction. 
The  natural  inference  is  to  regard  their  greater  profes- 
sional efficiency  as  due  to  a  "  loading  "  of  their  work  with 
affect  normally  attached  to  the  erotic  sphere.  Since  their 
work  is  useful,  and  represents  a  good  type  of  affective 
transference,  it  belongs  to  the  type  defined  in  Chapter  IV 
as  sublimation.  In  the  B  type,  whose  eroticism  is  freer, 
this  transference,  or  sublimation,  does  not  take  place; 
they  lack  this  access  of  energy  for  their  work  and  so  are 
less  efficient  in  it.40 

In  connection  with  these  tests  there  was  developed  a 
system  for  recording  the  data  on  the  personality.  It  has 
been  shown  at  different  times  that  personal  traits  are 
measurable  by  relative  position.  That  is,  if  several  per- 
sons independently  grade  some  one  in  respect  to  his  in- 
tellectual ability,  cooperativeness,  cheerfulness,  etc.,  there 
is  fairly  close  agreement  among  them  as  to  how  much  of 
these  traits  he  possesses.41  It  is  necessary  to  have  an  in- 
clusive view  of  the  personality,  since  traits  may  mean  dif- 

40  For  further  references  on  the  association  test  and  personality, 
cf.   Psychol.   Bui.    13    (1916),    146.    Also    Moore,    "A    Method   of 
Testing  the  Strength  of  Instincts,"  Am.  J.  Psychol.  27  (1916),  226- 

233- 

41  The    first    published    study   seems   to   be   that   of   Norsworthy, 
"  Validity  of  Judgments  of  Character,"  Essays  in  Honor  of  William 
James  (1908),  553-567.     Much  additional  material  is  now  available 
in   Hollingworth,   "Vocational    Psychology"    (1916),  esp.   Chs.   II, 
VI  and  VII. 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES          »67 

ferent  things  to  the  personality  according  to  the  setting 
in  which  they  occur.  Kindliness,  for  example,  in  social 
relations,  or  to  animals,  may  be  fundamental,  or  compen- 
satory to  unbalanced  love-life  (cf.  Ch.  IV,  p.  116). 
The  series  of  traits  finally  evolved  is  given  below.  The 
necessity  for  adapting  it  to  "  relative  position  "  treatment 
often  excluded  questions  that  require  topical  answers. 
But  topical  information  is  altogether  essential  to  an  intel- 
ligent grading  of  these  traits.  The  series  aims  to  be  so 
inclusive  that,  if  its  ground  is  reliably  covered,  one  has  a 
complete  idea  of  how  the  individual  attempts  to  adjust 
himself  to  life,  and  how  well  he  succeeds  in  doing  so.  It 
should  acquaint  us  with  the  character  of  his  mental  bal- 
ance, and  its  weaknesses,  and  we  should  be  in  a  position 
to  advise  what  are  the  best  courses  to  remedy  them.  The 
usual  data  in  regard  to  age,  occupation,  etc.,  are  of  course 
assumed.  About  90  topics  of  inquiry  are  included,  di- 
vided into  14  sections  as  follows:42 

I.    INTELLECTUAL  PROCESSES 

1.  Ease  of  learning 

2.  Goodness  of  memory 

3.  Fund  of  information 

4.  Goodness  of  observation 

5.  Vividness  of  mental  imagery 

II.    OUTPUT  OF  ENERGY 

6.  How  much  motor  activity 

7.  Talkativeness 

8.  Skill  with  tools,  needlework,  etc. 

9.  Bodily  dexterity  and  grace 

42  Their  statement  is  much  abbreviated  here.  They  are  more  fully 
presented  and  explained  in  "The  Systematic  Observation  of  the 
Personality  —  in  its  Relation  to  the  Hygiene  of  Mind,"  Psychol.  Rev. 
21  (1914),  295-332.  Cf.  also  Hoch  and  Amsden,  "A  Guide  to  the 
Descriptive  Study  of  the  Personality,"  Rev.  of  Neurol.  and  Psy- 
chiat.  ir  (1913),  577-587. 


268  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

III.    SELF-ASSERTION 

10.  Effort  to  shape  surroundings 

11.  Independence  of  the  opinion  of  others 

12.  Tendency  to  assume  leadership 

13.  Extent  of  material  ambitions 

14.  Bearing  up  under  difficulties  and  misfortunes 

15.  Ability  to  face  crises 

16.  Inclination  to  face  danger 

IV.    ADAPTABILITY 

17.  Getting  along  with  children 

18.  Getting  along  with  people  in  older  years  (tactfulness) 

19.  Conformable  to  discipline 

20.  Tendency  to  be  guided  by  advice 

21.  Resourcefulness 

V.    GENERAL  HABITS  OF  WORK 

22.  Promptness  in  meeting  situations 

23.  Tendency  to  system  in  work 

24.  Executive  tendencies  (leader  or  follower) 

25.  Persistence 

26.  Punctuality 

VI.    MORAL  SPHERE 

27.  Keeping  of  word 

28.  Truthfulness  in  matters  of  present  or  past 

29.  Trustworthiness  in  money  matters 

30.  Conscientiousness  in  performance  of  duty 

31.  Discretion  with  the  reputation  of  others 

32.  Mindful  of  the  equal  rights  of  others 

VII.    RECREATIVE  ACTIVITIES 

33.  Sports  of  quick  and  continuous  activity 

34.  Less  active  sports 

35.  Hunting  or  fishing 

36.  Camp  life  in  general 

37.  Games  of  intellectual  character 

38.  Mental  games  of  less  intellectual  character 

39.  Gambling  or  wagers 

40.  Alcohol 

41.  Tobacco 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES     369 

42.  Other  drugs 

43.  Reading 

44.  Music 

45.  Pictures 

46.  Artistic  creations 

47.  Delicacies  in  eating  or  drinking 

48.  Sports  involving  physical  danger 

VIII.    GENERAL  CAST  OF  MOOD 

49.  Cheerfulness 

50.  Stability 

51.  Depth 

IX.    ATTITUDE  TOWARD  SELF 

52.  Self-consciousness 

53.  Conceit 

54.  Patience,  capacity  to  "  endure  to  the  end  " 

55.  Demand  for  self-justification 

X.    ATTITUDE  TOWARD  OTHERS 

56.  Sympathy 

57.  Generosity 

58.  Criticism 

59.  Jealousy 

60.  Sensitiveness 

61.  Capacity  to  forgive 

62.  Ability  to  judge  others 

XI.    REACTIONS  TO  ATTITUDE  TOWARD  SELF 
AND  OTHERS 

63.  Care  of  personal  appearance 

64.  Sociability. 

65.  Social  forwardness 

66.  Demonstrative  of  emotion 

67.  Tendency  to  "  unburden  " 

68.  Demand  for  sympathy 

69.  Inclination  to  self-pity 

70.  Pleasure  in  success  or  enjoyment  of  others 

71.  "Good  loser" 

72.  Given  to  witticisms,  epigrams,  etc. 

73.  Tendency  to  emphasize  the  good  side  of  the  environment 

74.  Evenness  of  nature  (temper) 


270  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

XII.     POSITION  TOWARD  REALITY 

75.  Capacity  to  take  things  as  they  are 

76.  Acknowledgment  of  mistakes  or  transgressions 

77.  Practical 

78.  Influenced  in  action  by  likes  and  dislikes 

79.  Daydreaming 

XIII.     SEXUAL  SPHERE 

80.  Forwardness  toward  the  opposite  sex 

81.  Freedom  of  discussing  own  relation  to  question,  with 

intimates 

82.  Sexual  intercourse 

83.  Flirtation,  love  affairs,  "  spooning,"  etc. 

84.  Sexual  trends  in  reading,  art,  conversation 

85.  Masturbation  and  allied  practices,  sexual  imagination 

86.  Negativistic  reactions  (prudishness) 

87.  What  degree  of  contentment  with  existing  sexual  adjust- 

ments 

88.  Dominant  partner  in  sexual  relationships 

XIV.     BALANCING  FACTORS 

(This  conception  of  balancing  factors  is  narrower  than 
that  of  the  last  chapter  in  this  volume.  Cf.  pp.  274-275.) 

89.  How  firm  in  religious  beliefs 

90.  Active  in  church  work 

91.  Intense  interest  or  fads  other  than  already  dealt  with 

92.  Expressions  of  ideals 

93.  Their  harmony  with  actual  conduct 

94.  How  adequate  a  balance  is  the  final  result  of  these  means 

There  is  little  advantage  in  regarding  such  a  series  as 
a  fixed  quantity.  Traits  should  be  taken  from  or  added 
to  it  according  to  the  purposes  it  is  to  serve.  It  was 
arranged  for  studies  in  connection  xvith  the  association 
experiment,  and  to  give  a  general  survey  of  mental  bal- 
ance. Other  purposes,  like  those  of  vocational  selection, 
would  call  for  special  modifications.  \Ye  are  not  inter- 
ested in  the  same  series  of  traits  for  a  teacher  as  for  an 
Advertising  expert.  Valuable  or  disadvantageous  traits 


EXPERIMENTAL  APPROACHES     871 

to  the  advertising  expert  would  not  have  the  same  signifi- 
cance for  the  teacher. 

The  logical  purpose  of  experimental  work  in  the  direc- 
tions discussed  is  to  provide  wholly  objective  bases  for 
judgment  of  a  person's  mental  equipment,  balance,  and  fit- 
ness for  certain  kinds  of  work.  The  closest  approach  to 
this  end  has  been  made  in  the  measures  of  intelligence, 
with  their  "  year  "  and  "  point  "  scales.  But  the  intelli- 
gence scales  are  not,  as  their  authors  caution  us,  auto- 
matic machines  with  which  one  performs  certain  opera- 
tions and  receives  a  statement  of  mental  age.  The 
methods  of  experimental  psychology  are  colors  and 
brushes  with  which  only  the  good  artist  paints  a  good  pic- 
ture. An  inferior  picture  is  less  likely  to  result  from  bad 
colors  and  brushes  than  from  the  artist's  lack  of  skill. 
Many  can  mix  colors  well  enough;  it  takes  the  artist  to 
apply  their  mixture  with  his  brains.  With  all  the  work  of 
the  association  test,  how  little  was  seen  of  its  important 
meanings  before  the  genius  of  Jung  threw  them  on  the 
canvas!  Cattell,  Courtis,  Healy,  Hollingworth,  Jung, 
Scott,  Strong,  Terman,  Thorndike,  Woolley,  Yerkes  and 
their  fellows  all  do  their  utmost  to  improve  the  paints  and 
brushes  by  which  they  and  their  fellows  can  paint  the 
thing  as  they  see  it  more  like  what  it  is.  But  the  beginner 
must  understand  as  well,  that  it  is  not  upon  the  tubes  and 
brushes  of  experiments  alone  that  success  depends,  but 
also  on  abilities  partly  native,  partly  of  experience,  which 
are  not  to  be  formulated  and  not  wholly  conscious.  "  I 
lent  you  my  fiddle,  but  not  my  fiddlestick,"  said  Walton 
to  his  less  expert  fellow  angler.  The  devising  of  psycho- 
logical methods  is  a  science ;  but  their  use  is,  and  may  al- 
ways remain,  an  art.  They  give  us  more  or  less  of  the 
story,  which  is  not  to  be  completed  from  the  laboratory 


372  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

nor  from  books.  It  comes  from  those  flowerings  of  the 
unconscious  that  we  call  intuition.  Art  is  the  uncon- 
scious of  science. 

These  considerations  apply  to  simpler  mental  measure- 
ments like  the  intelligence  scales;  they  apply  much  more 
to  the  experiments  of  vocational  bearing,  including  the 
"  relative  position  "  and  "  association  "  methods.  Ex- 
periments of  this  type,  with  standardized  observations  of 
non-experimental  behavior,  are  the  chief  reliance  for  deal- 
ing with  those  questions  of  "  temperamental "  fitness 
whose  import  increases,  one  might  say,  as  the  square  of 
a  man's  rise  in  the  outer  world.  Better  reasons  can  now 
be  given  for  regarding  a  boy  John  as  defective,  than  for 
saying  that  James  will  do  best  as  a  teacher,  lawyer,  or 
business  man.  Diagnosis  of  the  lower  and  more  uni- 
versally necessary  mental  traits  has  for  the  moment  out- 
stripped that  of  the  higher  and  more  complicated  voca- 
tional aptitudes.  But  to  these  belongs  a  richer  future, 
in  which  applied  science  of  mind  orders  the  Utopia  with 
a  place  for  every  man,  and  every  man  in  his  place. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

BALANCING    FACTORS 

ONE  of  the  important  parts  of  a  steam  or  gasoline 
engine  is  a  flywheel,  whose  purpose  is  to  absorb  energy 
transmitted  from  the  cylinder,  and  keep  the  machine 
moving  at  the  most  favorable  rate.  Were  it  not  there, 
the  machine  would  race  and  tear  itself  to  pieces.  If  it 
is  too  light,  it  will  not  absorb  the  energy  properly.  The 
machine  will  still  run  too  fast,  and  there  will  be  exces- 
sive vibration,  which  is  waste  of  energy.  In  some  gaso- 
line motors,  the  cylinders  themselves  are  made  to  re- 
volve, and  serve  also  the  purpose  of  a  flywheel.  In  the 
electric  motor,  which  we  may  accept  as  our  symbol  of 
vital  activity,  the  purpose  of  the  flywheel  is  similarly 
supplied  by  the  weight  and  resistance  of  the  revolving 
armature.  The  weight  of  the  flywheel  and  armature 
makes  them  "  balancing  "  factors  in  the  operation  of  the 
machines.  In  a  timepiece,  this  mechanism  is  called  the 
"  balance  wheel." 

In  order  that  a  mental  mechanism  may  operate  prop- 
erly it  also  must  be  rightly  "  balanced."  An  electric 
motor  is  not  properly  balanced  if  its  resistance  is  so  high 
that  it  will  not  take  care  of  the  current  it  needs  for  best 
speed;  the  analogy  would  be  a  too  heavy  flywheel  on 
a  steam  engine.  It  will  not  "  race  "  but  rather  refuse  to 
run,  and  the  energy  of  the  current  will  be  wasted  in 
heat.  Let  the  operation  of  such  a  machine  represent  the 

19  273 


274  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

performance  of  some  vital  task,  of  the  love-life,  for  ex- 
ample. There  is  available  a  certain  amount  of  energy 
for  its  operation.  The  external  conditions  to  which  this 
adaptation  is  to  be  made,  are  represented  by  the  motor 
itself.  "  Perfect  marriage  "  is  literally  with  a  partner 
whom  one  can  love  as  far  as  desire  extends.  Figura- 
tively it  is  the  running  of  a  motor  whose  resistance  is  not 
too  high  to  take  all  the  current  available  for  it,  nor  yet 
so  low  that  it  takes  more  current  than  the  dynamo  is  pre- 
pared to  furnish,  so  that  passion  "  burns  out "  at  once. 
Now  suppose  that  one  partner  is  disappointed  or  dissatis- 
fied in  the  other.  Then  there  is  too  much  resistance  be- 
tween them  for  the  current  of  the  love-life  to  be  prop- 
erly taken  up  in  the  marriage.  Waste  of  energy,  if 
not  damage,  results  unless  this  superfluous  energy  is  in 
some  other  way  taken  care  of  or  "  balanced."  A  woman 
may  find  such  a  balancing  factor  in  religion.  Mental 
adaptation  is  given  in  a  proper  balance  between  vital 
energy  and  the  mechanisms  at  hand  to  take  it  up.  In  a 
narrower  sense  than  here  used,  "  balancing  factors  "  has 
been  a  name  for  those  mental  operations  which  take  up 
vital  energy  not  spent  in  the  service  of  the  fundamental 
trends.  In  that  sense,  normal  marriage  would  not  be 
conceived  as  a  balancing  factor.  But  if  one  is  unhappily 
married,  and  manages  to  compensate  for  that  unhappiness 
by  interest  in  religion,  then  religion  would  meet  the  idea 
of  a  balancing  factor,  in  restoring  the  balance  of  life  by 
taking  up  energy  which  the  love-life  proper  has  failed  to 
absorb.  Our  conception  is  that  all  trends,  fundamental 
and  otherwise,  "  balance  "  the  output  of  vital  energy,  and 
are  thus  balancing  factors. 

Picture  John's  mental  organism  as  a  factory  in  which 
vital  energy,  as  if  it  were  electric  current,  is  being  ex- 


BALANCING  FACTORS  £75 

pended  for  mental  trends,  as  if  it  were  operating  electric 
motors.  It  is  their  function  to  take  up  and  use  all  the 
energy  which  the  power  plant  supplies.  When  they  do 
this  John's  mental  organism  is  well  adjusted.  These 
motors  are  numberless,  and  of  many  different  kinds.  In 
the  foreground  is  perhaps  the  largest  of  them  all,  and  the 
most  continually  in  operation;  it  represents  the  love-life. 
If  it  were  absent,  probably  all  the  other  machines  one 
might  install  would  hardly  suffice  to  make  good  use  of  the 
energy  thus  left  free.  As  John  is  much  interested  in 
mathematics  (by  teaching  of  which  he  supports  himself 
and  family),  a  large  motor  takes  care  of  this  scientific 
trend.  He  is  also  an  ardent  fisherman,  and  for  some 
weeks  in  the  year,  the  scientific  motor  is  shut  down, 
while  the  piscatorial  one  takes  the  energy  that  went  to 
operate  it.  If  it  were  unavailable,  vacations  would  be 
dreary  wastes.  His  minor  interest  in  politics  would  not 
balance  it,  for  that  motor  will  not  take  much  current. 
Similarly  all  his  activities  are  like  machines  that  require 
more  or  less  current  for  their  operation  according  to  ^ 
their  importance  for  his  mental  poise.  If  one  refuses  to 
work,  he  can  to  some  degree  balance  the  free  energy  by 
turning  it  into  another.  As  was  pointed  out  in  Chapter 
II,  it  can  be  turned  to  a  useful  or  a  wasteful  trend. 
Trends  consistent  with  fundamental  strivings  are  useful,  \ 
others  wasteful.  John's  fishing  is  useful,  because  it  im- 
proves his  health,  and  makes  him  better  able  to  work. 
An  alcoholic  trend  would  be  wasteful,  as  inconsistent  with 
the  functions  of  a  father  and  provider. 

But  no  motor  will  run  long  upon  current  alone.     If  it 
is  not  supplied  with  oil,  it  will  heat  and  stop.     In  life,  ,\ 
the  lubricating  function  of  money  to  the  social  machinery  \\ 
is  well  known.     It  plays  an  equally  essential  part  in  the 


276  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

smooth  operation  of  one's  mental  trends.  As  long  as 
a  motor  will  run  without  oil,  so  long  can  one  live  on  love 
without  paying  bills.  John's  fishing  trend  could  not  op- 
erate without  the  lubrication  of  traveling  expenses.  A 
most  necessary  piece  of  machinery  therefore,  is  that 
which  supplies  the  pecuniary  lubrication  needed  for  the 
trends  that  are  to  operate.  In  the  case  of  John,  who 
teaches  mathematics  for  a  living,  it  is  that  mental 
mechanism  which  supplies  pecuniary  lubrication  to  the 
trends  of  his  love-life,  to  his  fondness  for  sport,  and  to 
his  interest  in  politics.  Not  one  of  these  could  run  with- 
out it,  and  if  there  is  not  enough  to  supply  all,  the  less 
essential  ones  are  shut  down.  Jewels  and  foreign  travel 
are  far  greater  oil-eaters  than  tennis  or  the  classics.  A 
profound  interest  is  apt  to  require  more  of  it  than  a 
superficial  one. 

Machinery  may  be  over-oiled;  we  may  observe  those 
whose  money  is  a  burden  rather  than  a  source  of  happi- 
ness. If  one's  interests  are  narrow,  with  few  and  small 
trends  to  operate,  and  one  does  not  understand  how  to 
install  others,  then  the  mental  machinery  may  become 
over-oiled  with  money.  A  day  laborer  of  sixty  years  or 
a  dissolute  spendthrift  who  inherited  a  million  dollars 
might  find  himself  in  such  a  case;  but  the  mathematician, 
John,  should  have  no  such  difficulty.  He  would  build 
a  better  house  for  his  family,  provide  servants  to  give 
himself  and  his  wife  more  time  for  their  children  or  for 
cultural  interests.  If  possible,  they  would  rear  a  larger 
number  of  children,  and  provide  them  with  the  best  com- 
panions and  schooling  to  live  usefully.  He  would  take 
more  attractive  fishing  trips,  and  assume  a  more  conspicu- 
ous role  in  politics.  Thus  he  could  well  and  fully  occupy 
his  new  fortune.  His  abundant  energies  would  enable 


BALANCING  FACTORS  277 

him  to  take  care  of  the  broader  interests  which  such  an 
access  of  wealth  makes  imperative  to  well  balanced 
life. 

If  he  were  unhappily  married,  he  could  provide  greater 
isolation,  perhaps  separate  establishments  for  himself 
and  his  wife.  Cultivating  independent  interests  then 
restores  a  measure  of  balance  to  their  existence  impossi- 
ble in  their  dependence  on  eack.other. 

To  sum  up  these  introductory  remarks  :  mental 


tion  is  the  balance  of  the  supply  pf  vital  pnp^gy  wit11  '*** 
expenditure.  Different  trends  require  different  amounts 
of  energy  for  their  operation,  and  are  fitted  to  take  care 
of  different  amounts  of  it.  Lack  of  balance  results  from 
the  direction  of  more,  or  less,  energy  to  certain  trends, 
than  they  are  fitted  to  take  care  of.  One  way  to  restore 
the  balance  is  to  take  away  the  superfluous  energy  and 
direct  it  to  other  trends,  as  when  an  unmarried  or  unhap- 
pily married  woman  interests  herself  in  religion.  An- 
other way  to  restore  the  balance  would  be  to  reconstruct 
the  marital  relationship  so  that  this  trend  would  take  the 
amount  of  energy  one  would  naturally  bestow  upon  it. 
We  shall  meet  these  examples  below  in  more  detail.  A 
narrower  conception  of  balancing  factors  is  represented 
in  the  first  instance,  where  another  trend  takes  up  the 
excess  of  energy  obstructed  in  its  fundamental  course. 
Money  contributes  essentially  to  the  operation  of  all 
balancing  factors,  as  oil  to  machinery. 

We  cannot  expect  to  maintain  this  discussion  of  mental 
processes  upon  the  simple  analogy  of  an  electrical  ma- 
chine. It  has  not  represented  the  important  fact  that 
some  kinds  of  balancing  factors  are  consistent  and  some 
inconsistent  with  fundamental  trends  ^fl  with  nng  ^rj- 
other.  If  they  are  inconsistent,  mental  conflicts  arise, 


278  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

and  balance  is  disturbed  no  matter  bow  their  energy  is 
distributed.  Just  as  one  does  not  mix  incornpatibles  in 
a  pharmaceutical  prescription,  so  certain  trends,  in  them- 
selves proper,  do  not  operate  well  together.  Thus  fail- 
ure to  mix  requires  discussion. 

In  preceding  chapters  we  described  certain  chief  fea- 
tures of  mental  activity;  dissociation,  regr^sjiion,  affec- 
tive transference,  symbolism.  The  treatment  dealt  more 
with  their  role  in  mental  pathology  than  in  healthily  bal- 
anced adjustments.  They  have  a  more  constructive  part 
to  play  in  this  concluding  chapter  of  our  studies. 

The  discussion  can  be  made  more  practical  if  we  begin 
by  defining  as  precisely  as  possible  the  meaning^pf ..adapta- 
tion to  life  under  the  given  conditipns;  this  aspect  of  the 
inquiry  has  not  been  followed  far  beyond  the  first  chap- 
ter. We  take  as  working  hypotheses,  first,  that_jnen 
achieve  adaptation  to  life,  in  proportion  to  their  happi- 
aessjnjt;  second,  that  happiness  consists  in  the  balanced 
expenditure  of  energy  for  the  realization  of,  desires; 
(Heaven  was  called  by  the  Hindus  Kawiadhuk,  the  realm 
of  the  fulfillment  of  wishes).  And  third,  that  the  under- 
lying motive  in  voluntary  human  conduct  is  the  pursuit  of 
a  conscious  happiness. 

It  is  also  fair  to  suppose  that,  in  the  countless  ages  of 
its  existence,  humanity  has  come  to  "  know  what  it 
wants,"  that  is,  the  things  in  which  one  normally  seeks 
happiness  are  the  things  which,  if  obtained,  are  best  cal- 
culated to  bring  happiness.  The  first  task  is  then  to  ex- 
"Timine  the  ways  in  which  men  seek  happiness;  and  second, 
the  parts  which  different  mental  mechanisms  play  in  the 
'  following  of  these  ways. 

Certain  simple  and  basal  needs  are  to  be  eliminated 
from  the  discussion.  Men  deprived  of  air  or  water  are 


BALANCING  FACTORS  279 

very  unhappy,  but  they  are  also  very  short-lived,  and 
competition  for  meeting  these  needs  does  not  form  a 
regular  part  of  the  struggle  for  existence  in  the  mass  of 
humanity. 

There  are  two  general  classes  into  which  men's  striv- 
ings  for  happiness  fall.  They  were  symbolized  in  the 
parable  of  the  good  and  faithful  servants.  They  put 
their  talents  to  external  use,  while  another  hid  his  in  the 
earth.  Each  was  satisfied  with  what  he  had  done.  In 
like  manner  do  men  put  part  of  their  energies  to  external 
use.  They  spend  them  on  their  families  or  on  society. 
Another  part  of  men's  energies  is  spent  for  more  per- 
sonal, egoistic  satisfactions,  like  sense-pleasures,  and  fads 
of  intellect  or  sport.  All  of  us  put  some  of  our  energies  ^ 
out  at  interest,  and  hide  some  part  of  them  in  the  earth. 
The  stuporous  catatonic  has  them  all  hidden  there. 

Below  the  human  world  the  two  great  satisfactions  i 
of  hunger  and  love  are  practically  met  in  the  organic  | 
possession  of  food  and  of  the  opposite  sex.     In  civilized 
life  our  search  for  food,  shelter  and  warmth  is  first  for 
money  with  which  to  buy  them.     This  search  is  expressed 
in  the  greatest  variety  of  human  ways  to  make  a  living. 
Sexual  partners  are  no  longer  approached  with  cave-man 
directness,  sometimes  even  not  at  all.     The  satisfactions 
normally  obtained  in  them  are  sought  through  affective 
symbols  or  "  sublimations  "  of  them. 

In  human  strivings  for  happiness  these  two  great  trends 
of  hunger  and  love  are  represented  in  every  variety  of 
"  selfish  "  and  "  unselfish  "  aspect.  We  have  met  in 
masturbation  with  a  most  self-centered  form  of  erotic 
trend.  Satisfaction  is  far  more  often  sought  here  than 
found.  There  are  few  instances  in  which  a  permanent 
and  fairly  successful  adaptation  on  this  level  appears. 


280  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

The  vast  majority  of  individuals  progress  beyond  it  to 
the  opposite  sex. 

Jung  regards  the  heterosexual  trend  as  the  chief  force 
to  free  us  from^regression  into  the  leading  strings  of 
childhood.  Man  maynoTTeave  father  and  mother  ex- 
cept to  cleave  unto  his  wife.  Only  the  first  step  in  this 
direction  is  denoted  in  the  free  incidental  relationships 
of  prostitution.  This  must  be  considered  to  have  a  num- 
ber of  grades,  from  a  simple  masturbation  per  vaginam, 
through  increasing  degrees  of  affection  and  personal  re- 
sponse between  its  objects.  Gradually  organic  satisfac- 
tions blend  with  mental  ones,  and  the  relationship  there- 
with becomes  more  permanent  and  exclusive.  A  rela- 
tionship of  this  level  is  unquestionably  sufficient,  if  not 
best  suited  to  the  love-life  of  some  natures.  In  com- 
munities whose  mores  are  set  against  such  relationships, 
a  compromise  may  be  attempted  in  childless  marriage. 

The  prostitute  type  of  adjustment  does  not  long  bal- 
ance the  love-life  of  the  normal  individual.  It  becomes, 
if,  indeed,  it  is  not  always,  a  regressive  or  shirking  re- 
action to  the  adult  love-life.  "  Many  a  young  man,"  re- 
marks Campbell,  "  thinks  it  is  the  natural  thing  to  indulge 
his  sexual  instinct  with  prostitutes  and  others,  not 
realizing  that  in  gratifying  an  instinct  that  is  one  part  of 
his  nature,  he  is  proving  false  to  ethical  cravings  which 
are  just  as  essential  and  just  as  healthy  a  part  of  his 
nature."  This,  Jung  considers,  is  the  conflict  that  pro- 
duces the  neurotic  Don  Juan. 

The  frequency  with  which  sexual  intercourse  is  established 
by  men  before  marriage  is  variously  estimated  from  50  to 
95  per  cent.  Loewenfeld  quotes  a  table  from  Meirowsky, 
showing  the  ages  of  its  establishment  among  a  group  of  uni- 
versity students : 


BALANCING  FACTORS  281 

Age   13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23  24  26 

Cases i     i     2  ii  14  20  24  29  19  u     8    4     i 

This  indicates  85  per  cent.  Data  as  to  marriage  among 
them  are  not  quoted.  The  figure  would  probably  be  lower 
for  a  corresponding  American  group. 

Between  the  relationships  of  marriage  and  prostitution 
there  is  no  personal  boundary,  and  the  social  one  is  some- 
times hazy  enough.1  But  for  practical  purposes  there 
are  present  two  distinctions  between  voluntarily  childless 
marriage  and  a  high-level  prostitution.  Marriage  in- 
vests the  relationship  with  a  social  sanction  that  has  some 
advantages  for  the  man  and  most  important  ones  for  the 
woman.  On  the  other  hand,  it  considerably  impairs  the 
personal  independence  of  either  partner,2  and  increases 
the  sacrifices  which  must  be  made.  The  opinion^  rjre-  / 
vails  that  no  organic  or  intellectual  companionship  off  sets  I 
the  sacrifices  of  marriage,  without  the^ojopgnsation  off 
children.  In  our  figurative  terms,  marriage  alone  does 
not  take  up  the  energy  of  a  fully  developed  love-life;  its 
mechanism  requires  the  additional  "  load  "  of  children  to 
run  with  proper  balance. 

In  the  attitude  toward  the  control  of  offspring,  three 

1  Des  Pfarrers  Segen  macht  so  vicl 
Als  springt  man  iiber'n  Besenstjel 
Das  sieht  man  bci  besser'n  Eeuten,  ha, 
Lacht  hell  die  Ziehharrnonika 
Und  macht  dazu  widewik 
Die  quak  quiik  quiik  Musik. 

"  Simplicissimus,"  (ro.  1905). 

2  This,  on  the  other  hand,  is  more  marked  for  the  man.  It  is  only 
under  such  liberal  institutions  as  prevail  in  America  that  marriage 
holds  for  the  woman  a  marked  sacrifice  of  this  nature.  Often  it 
brings  a  greater  independence. 

Weil  bekanntlich  manche  Sachen 
Welche  grosse  Freude  machen, 
Madchen  nicht  allein  versteh'n 
Als  da  ist:    ins  Wirtshaus  geh'n. 

(Busch.) 


282  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

stages  are  traceable.  Among  primitive  peoples,  Sumner 
remarks  that  abortion,  like  killing  of  the  old,  is  the  dic- 
tate of  social  expediency.  As  the  struggle  for  existence 
becomes  easier,  more  children  can  be  cared  for,  and 
used  in  the  tribe's  work.  One  could  spare  the  lives  of 
the  old,  increasingly  valuable  for  counsel.  The  growing 
value  of  children  to  the  community  raises  a  moral  tabu 
against  abortion,  that  in  large  measure  persists  among 
civilized  peoples  to  our  day.  It  is  expressed  in  legisla- 
tion. "  Where  religious  and  other  sanctions  give  ade- 
quate support  to  the  family  instincts,"  says  McDougall, 
"  no  serious  diminution  of  fertility  occurs.  It  is  for 
this  reason  that  ancestor  worship  is  so  favorable  to  na- 
tional stability."  Meanwhile  the  competition  of  civilized 
life  becomes  fiercer  again,  and  it  is  more  difficult  to  rear 
children  under  the  standards  imposed.  Then  the  tabu 
breaks  down,  first  among  those  to  whom  children  are  the 
most  inconvenience,  but  preserved  in  superstition,  or 
ignorance  of  how  to  escape  it. 

There  unquestionably  exist  childless  marriages  to  which 
both  parties  are  voluntary,  and  in  which  adequate  com- 
pensation is  found  elsewhere  for  the  loss  of  independence 
involved.     Strong  outside  interests  serve  to  decrease  the 
dependence  of  husband  and  wife  on  each  other,  particu- 
larly  if   they  are   not  interests  possessed   in   common. 
Such  balancing  factors  for  a  childless  marriage  are  some- 
what more  available  for  well-to-do  persons  than  for  those 
in  moderate  or  straitened  circumstances.     Women  stand 
\  in  greater  need  of  them  than  men,  and  the  opening  of 
I  various  occupations  to  them  is  of  special  value  in  this 
j  direction. 

Erotic  motives  for  marriage  are  easier  to  state  than  to 
weigh.     In  the  man,  the  most  important  motive  is  the 


BALANCING  FACTORS  283 

organic  possession  of  a  woman  whom  the  nature  of  both 
or  either  prevents  from  being  possessed  in  any  other  way. 
Desire  for  children  does  not  alone  suffice  to  concentrate 
affection  upon  a  specific  individual.  "  Eugenic "  and 
"  companionship  "  mot'Vf0  arf  iifsn?%  to  b?  frr^He^/j  ag 
rationalizations.  The  same  is  true  of  the  conventional 
reasons  assigned  as  to  why  a  woman  attracts  us  (figure, 
eye  color,  hair,  cleverness).  With  John  or  James  of  the 
first  chapter,  we  must  ask  ourselves,  why  do  these  fea- 
tures attract  us  where  they  do  not  other  men,  and  why 
do  they  not  attract  us  in  some  other  woman?  We  are 
keenly  aware  of  the  effects;  but  their  rauses  lie  in  foe 
unconscious.  It  is  important  to  remember,  that  a  part- 
ner  may  be  sought,  not  in  strictly  sexual  desire,  but  in  re- 
gression,  as  a  "  mother"-  or  "  father  "-representative.8 
This  is  the  key  to  many  infatuations  where  the  love  object 
is  quite  lacking  in  the  accepted  sexual  attractiveness. 

In  women,  the  desire  for  children  has  a  larger  share 
in  the  conscious  motives  for  marriage.  This  seems  asso- 
ciated with  the  fact  that,  in  women,  erotic  pleasures  are 
not  usually  so  concentrated  in  the  genital  areas  as  in  man. 
They  are  more  diffused  over  the  body  generally. 
Sadger4  observes  that  women  of  this,  the  more  usual 
type,  adapt  themselves  better  to  the  care  of  children, 
since  this  presents  special  opportunities  for  the  gratifica- 
tion of  an  extragenital  hedonism  (as  in  breast  feeding),; 
Maternal  instinct  is  weaker  in  women  whose  desire,, 
though  strong,  is  concentrated  about  the  genital  areas.  \\ 
They  often  do  not  wish  for  children,  or  are  less  careful 
of  them  when  l>orn. 

3  Cf.  "Mental  Regression:  Tts  Conception  and  Types,"  Psychiat.    * 
Bui.  g  (1916),  esp.  457-467. 

4  Jahrb.  f.  f>sa  u.  f>sf>.  Forsch.,  3  (1912),  547. 


284  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

The  organic  attraction  to  specific  partners,  to  the  ex- 
clusion of  others,  is  usually  regarded  as  more  pronounced 
in  women  than  in  men.  As  with  them,  the  selection  is 
not  to  be  understood  upon  conscious  grounds.  "  Be- 
havioristic  "  methods  lend  themselves  better  than  normal 
introspection  to  studying  motives  governed  by  the  un- 
conscious. Abraham  has  published  a  preliminary  study 
of  this  character,  concerning  marriage  among  relatives.5 

Jit  is  not  that  inbreeding  produces  inferior  offspring,  so 
much  as  that  neuropathic  individuals  tend  to  inbreed. 
Such  unions  result  through  maldevelopment  of  the  instinc- 
tive life.  There  is  an  early  exaggerated  attachment  to 
the  parents,  which  may  be  termed  sexual  in  the  sense  that 
it  is  especially  directed  to  the  parent  of  the  opposite  sex. 

(Jealousy  of  the  loved  parent  is  prominent,  as  are  sexual 
reactions  between  brothers  and  sisters.     This  precocious 
eroticism  operates  to  fix  the  affect  upon  the  family  cir- 
y/Vjle,  so  that  with  increasing  age  the  proper  developmental 
\  y  t>  transference  to  persons  outside  of  it  does  not  take  place. 
In  consequence,   such  persons  remain  unmarried  alto- 
gether, or  do  not  get  beyond  an  adaptation  which,  in 
^  words  of  August  Hoch,  is  something  "  still  within  the 
sheltered  realm  of  the  home."     According  to  Hirschfeld, 
men  of  homosexual  tendencies  are  apt  to  make  cousin- 
marriages.     A  small  group  of  cases  is  distinguished  by 
late  marriage,  to  a  niece,  especially,  in  which  the  man  is 
much  under  the  domination  of  the  wife. 

All  these  groups  are  characterized  by  what  I  would  term 
the  monogamic  tendency.  With  most  men  the  inclinations 
of  puberty  are  not  lasting,  affection  turning  to  many  per- 
sons, one  after  the  other.  Often  intimate  attachments  are 
formed,  to  be  later  dissolved.  But  with  many  members  of 
such  families  as  tend  to  inbreeding,  the  development  is  other- 

*Jahrb.  f.  psa.  u.  psp.  Forsch.,  i  (1909),  110-118. 


BALANCING  FACTORS  285 

wise.  They  lack  the  polygamous  tendency.  They  are  not 
adapted  to  flirtation  or  rapid  change  of  personal  relation- 
ships. As  it  is  difficult  for  them  to  break  up  the  familial 
fixations  of  childhood,  so  it  is  in  later  years.  If  they  once 
fall  in  love,  this  attachment  tends  to  be  lasting  and  final 
[one-girl  man].  Even  if  inbreeding  does  not  result,  the 
breadth  of  choice  is  obviously  much  diminished. 

The  wise  virgin  knows   all   this,   and   counts  it  toft  ^ 
no  man's  credit  that  she  is   "  the  only  girl  he  everjl 
loved." 

Of  course  there  are  non-erotic  motives  for  marriage, 
such  as  money,  or  through  selection  of  partners  by  others. 
In  all  cases,  the  problem  of  happy  marriage  is  simply  the  " 
compensation  for  the  loss  of  ''"^ffiflflr^     Organic  sat- 
isfactions alone  are  not  to  be  depended  on  for  this.     They 
are  usually  and  most  effectively  supplemented  by  children,     y 
sometimes  also  by  wisely  used  wealth,  or  intellectual  in-     ^ 
terests. 

The  trend  for  propagation  is  the  usual  stabilizer  of 
matrimony,  whatever  may  be  its  role  in  bringing  mar- 
riage about.     Children  and  what  they  involve  must  be 
regarded  as  the  most  important  factors  in  adaptation. 
It  is  generally  apparent  that  with  the  continuity  of  the  I 
family  secured,  what  the  rest  of  life  holds  is  of  minor  | 
significance  for  human  happiness. 

Such  are  the  different  reactions  summed  up  in  an  or- 
dinary conception  of  erotic  trends.  They  cover  a  wide 
range.  Their  operation  in  some  form  appears  necessary 
to  human  adaptations.  The  next  part  of  our  inquiry 
deals  with  other  important  trends  as  consistent  or  not 
with  these  erotic  adjustments.  We  can  see,  for  example, 
that  a  trend  of  alcoholism  is  not  consistent  with  a  well 
developed  love-life,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  an 
important  adjuvant  to  prostitution.  We  justly  speak 


286  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

most  of  the  economic  trend,  which  is  coordinate  with  the 
love-life  as  a  fundamental  tendency  in  us. 
,/  In  general,  the  more  self -centered  the  love-life  is,  the 
less  involved  is  money  or  its  equivalent  in  carrying  it  on. 
If  the  love-life  is  to  be  satisfied  in  autoerotic  sense,  the 
economic  factor  disappears  altogether.  Such  desire  does 
not  involve  the  person's  following  any  trend  of  economic 
value,  but  as  one's  love-life  advances  in  the  scale  of 
altruism,  it  becomes  more  and  more  involved  with  eco- 
nomic needs.  The  more  developed  an  altruistic  love-life, 
the  greater  the  sum  of  its  energy  to  be  balanced  upon  the 
world  outside  the  self.  The  complete  living  out  of  such 
love-life  is  represented  in  the  family.  This  is  the  di- 
•  rection  the  normal  love-life  takes  and  the  end  it 
reaches. 

The  relation  of  economic  policy  to  erotic  trends  is  two- 
fold. First,  granted  that  marriage  or  some  lower  ad- 
justment gives  adequate  balance  to  the  energy  of  the  love- 
life  itself,  what  economic  policy  is  consistent  with  the 
proper  adjustments  thereto?  Second,  when  (as  in  the 
unhappily  married)  the  energy  of  the  love-life  is  not 

fa  balanced  in  the  erotic  trends,  what  economic  policy  is 
most  consistent  with  other  forms  of  balancing? 

To  found  a  family  and  rear  children  requires  some 
money;  and  the  more  money  is  available,  the  better  these 
things  can  be  done.  While  it  retains  this  supreme  bio- 
logical value,  the  pursuit  of  money  must  remain  a  funda- 
mental trend.  The  most  important  source  of  money  is 
paid  occupation.  That  occupation  is  the  most  consistent 
with  the  love-life,  which  helps  to  carry  it  on  best.  The 

I      most  natural  measure  of  this  consistency  is  the  amount 
of  money  the  occupation  brings. 

Financial  return  thus  gains  its  dominant  position  m  the 


BALANCING  FACTORS  287 

value  of  every  career.  The  increased  fullness  it  makes 
possible  to  the  love-life  is  by  all  odds  its  most  important 
role  in  human  happiness.  Its  part  in  a  lower-level  eroti- 
cism should  be  equally  clear.  That  economic  policy, 
therefore,  is  most  consistent  with  altruistic  love-life, 
whose  material  compensations  are  closest  to  the  person's 
earning  capacity.  But  by  no  means  every  one  puts  this 
motive  first  in  the  choice  of  a  vocation.  To  understand 
the  choice  of  vocation  upon  other  motives,  one  should 
regularly  look  for  a  "  compromise  formation  "  of  the 
altruistic  motives  of  the  love-life,  with  other  and  egoistic 
motives. 

Suppose  for  example,  that  John  has  a  choice  of  two 
kinds  of  work,  such  as  often  comes  to  men  in  the  profes- 
sions. The  first  has  longer  and  not  too  regular  hours, 
short  vacations,  rather  mixed  associates,  narrow  range 
of  reputation,  with  income  of  some  $10,000  a  year.  The 
second  offers  short,  regular  and  agreeable  hours,  long 
vacations,  an  agreeable  milieu,  with  a  distinct  access  of 
social  prestige.  Its  income  is  $4,000  a  year.  In  these 
respects  the  first  position  is  more  consistent  with  altru- 
istic motives,  its  increased  funds  providing  for  a  better 
family  support.  On  the  other  hand,  egoistic  motives 
like  love  of  prestige  and  ease,  are  more  consistent  with 
the  second  position,  with  its  income  sufficient  for  the  com- 
forts. Its  choice  would  represent  compromise  between 
familial  and  egoistic  motives.  In  view  of  previous  con- 
siderations (Ch.  I,  p.  12),  these  egoistic  motives  could 
easily  fail  to  be  seen  in  their  actual  character.  They 
would  be  disguised  by  rationalizations,  such  as  that  the 
less-paid  position  was  more  useful  to  society,  or  more 
beneficial  to  health. 

The  greater  part  of  men's  energies  is  ultimately  spent 


\| 

j» 


888  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

on  familial  trends.  But,  while  love-life  of  conventional 
pattern  absorbs  the  greatest  part  of  men's  energies,  in 
but  few  men  does  it  wholly  absorb  them,  and  in  some  it 
absorbs  them  very  incompletely  indeed.  Thus,  there  will 
be  a  certain  amount  of  the  love-life  unabsorbed  by  the 
marriage  relation,  to  be  "  balanced  "  by  outside  activity. 
Unhappy  marriage  results  from  a  failure  of  its  trends  to 
balance.  The  marriage  is  then  like  the  electric  motor 
whose  resistance  is  too  high  to  take  the  proper  current; 
it  will  operate  inefficiently. 

As  before  mentioned,  two  solutions  of  such  a  difficulty 
are  possible.  One  is  to  rewind  the  motor  with  less  re- 
sistance, so  that  it  will  properly  take  the  current  —  in 
other  words,  to  remove  the  marital  "  resistances  "  be- 
tween  husband  and  wife,  so  that  their  affection  may 
properly  be  spent  upon  each  other.  The  reason  why  this 
is  easier  said  than  done  is  because  such  resistances  are 
affairs  of  the  unconscious.  Surface  motives,  like  cruelty, 
drinking,  neglect,  are  readily  enough  determined,  but  not 
effectually  removable  until  we  understand  w/i^jdrinking, 
why  cruelty  and  why  neglect  ensue.  Of  these  causes, 
the  offending  party  is  nicely  to  be  quite  unconscious. 
The  "  burglars  in  the  garden  "  case  mentioned  by  Pfister 
(p.  145)  was  one  in  which  it  was  possible,  by  bringing 
resistances  to  the  conscious,  to  so  "  rewind  "  the  mental 
mechanism  that  a  proper  balance  of  the  love-life  was 
established. 

Such  are  the  solutions  sought  in  psychoanalysis;  they 
depend  upon  special  personal  influences  rather  than  upon 
economic  factors.  If  this  solution  cannot  be  had,  an- 
other lies  in  affective  transference  of  the  energy  unab- 
sorbed in  the  marriage.  Pfister  cites  an  observation  of 
this  kind  that  can  hardly  be  unique.  The  solution  is 


BALANCING  FACTORS 

inconsistent  with  social  order,  but  an  apt  illustration  of 

the  balancing  process.  "^ 

A  drunken  maltreater  of  wife  and  children  develops  inti- 
macy with  a  widow  and  at  once  gives  up  these  vicious  prac- 
tices; after  a  year  his  wife  writes  to  this  woman  a  fervent 
letter  of  thanks  for  his  reformation ;  she  must  on  no  account 
allow  moral  considerations  to  interfere  with  the  continuance 
of  the  liaison. 

Little  relation  exists  between  economic  factors  and 
such  a  situation  as  this;  but  the  importance  of  wealth  for 
its  adjustment  in  a  more  socially  consistent  way  should 
be  clear  to  every  one.  In  sum,  the  living  out  of  economic 
trends  is  fully  consistent  with  the  love-life  at  all  levels. 
In  the  absence  of  internal  resistances  to  the  love-life,  it 
simply  increases  the  fullness  with  which  the  love-life  can 
be  lived.  In  the  presence  of  such  resistances,  as  in  the 
cases  just  cited,  the  pursuit  of  wealth  can,  by  affective 
transfer,  itself  absorb  a  large  share  of  the  unbalanced 
energy.  Its  material  gains  open  a  vast  range  of  healthier 
interests  than  those  of  alcohol  or  adultery.  Some  direct 
interference  of  economic  trends  with  the  love-life  is  said 
to  occur,  particularly  in  the  engrossed  pursuit  of  great 
wealth,  or  in  cases  of  "  mental  over-oiling."  But  for 
the  great  bulk  of  human  adjustments,  it  is  negligible. 

To  enumerate  the  trends  serving  to  compensate  an 
unbalanced  love-life,  would  be  a  long  task,  and  involve 
repetition  of  matter  considered  in  Chapters  I  and  IV. 
All  follow  the  general  rule  pointed  out  in  Chapter  IV, 
that  the  transferred  energy  becomes  fixated  on  the  bal- 
ancing factor  (as  an  affective  symbol)  so  that  it  is 
neither  directed  nor  directible  to  the  primary  (in  this 
case  the  erotic)  trend.  Aside  from  this,  religion  is  the 

only  balancing  factor  that  shows  important  conflicts  with 
20 


MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

^the  love-life  (e.g.,  celibate  priesthood).     But  regressive 
W\  fixations  (Jung)  block  it  considerably,  as  do  social  trends 
VF      in  ways  still  to  be  dealt  with.     We  saw  in  Chapter  II 
Cr     /*that  the  love-life  is  the  most  blocked  of  trends.     It  liber- 
i  grates  more  energy  than  other  fundamental  trends  to  be 
?  \  balanced  elsewhere.     Hence,  the  acute  suggestion  has 
been  made  that  modern  civilization  has  itself  developed 
as  the  balancing  factor  of  comparative  sexual  suppression 
prevalent  among  the  peoples  in  whom  it  had  its  growth. 
The  energy  of  the  love-life  earlier  dissipated  in  primitive 
licentiousness  was  transferred  to  the  work  of  civilization. 
We  now  proceed  to  a   similar  consideration  of  the 
economic  trend ;  its  significance  for  human  happiness ;  its 
expression  or  operation ;  and  its  chief  consistencies  and 
inconsistencies  with  related  trends. 

The  economic  trend  has  two  phases;  the  use  of  wealth 
and  its  pursuit.  The  possession  of  wealth  contributes  to 
human  happiness  somewhat  as  follows.  The  miser's  con- 
templation of  his  wealth  represents,  like  the  talent  hidden 
in  the  earth,  a  wholly  selfish  satisfaction.  It  is  a  sort 
of  economic  onanism.  As  few  people  find  satisfaction 
in  it,  as  in  that  of  erotic  type.  Still,  on  the  egoistic  level, 
the  possession  of  wealth  gives  security  from  the  harsher 
struggle  for  existence.  The  love  of  it  is  a  Sicherungs^ 
vorkehr  in  Adler's  sense.  Wealth  plays  this  role  when  it 
is  unearned.  As  a  class,  those  who  inherit  their  wealth 
put  it  to  more  egoistic  uses  than  those  who  have  amassed 
it  themselves.  The  same  is  seen  in  "  marrying  money," 
when  the  man  who  has  done  so  gives  up  the  contest  for 
"adultified"  (i.e.,  made  adult)  existence,  and  hides 
within  his  wealth  as  in  a  Mujjj&leib,  for  a  life  of  self- 
J  indulgence.  To  marry  money  then  operates  as  a  regres- 
sion. 


BALANCING  FACTORS  291 

At  this  level  are  the  personalities  whose  satisfaction  is 
in  spending  money  rather  than  hoarding  it,  but  spending 
it  on  themselves  alone.  This  corresponds  to  the  begin- 
nings of  altruistic  erotism,  in  liaisons  of  incidental  and 
low  degree.  Advancing  in  the  scale  of  altruism,  the 
value  of  money,  like  that  of  love,  depends  more  and  more 
upon  its  expenditure  for  others.  This  takes  place  most 
effectively  along  familial  lines  as  has  amply  been  set 
forth. 

It  is  a  truism  that  under  the  degree  of  affection  whicK 
marriage  tacitly  assumes,  the  happy  home  depends  on  lit-01- 
tie  more  than  the  economic  necessaries  of  life.6    The 
part  played  in  human  happiness  by  expenditure  of  wealth  ^ 
is  not  so  great  or  direct  as  that  played  by  the  love-life. 
That  this  is  true  of  the  acquisition  of  wealth  is  more 
doubtful. 

Biologically,  the  need  for  food  is  reckoned  as  more 
fundamental  than  the  sexual  trends.  Among  animals 
generally  a  greater  amount  of  energy  appears  directed 
into  the  former  channel.  The  love-life  is  dependent  on  a 
nourished  organism;  what  Napoleon  said  of  armies  is 
quite  true  of  lovers  also.  "  Sine  Cererc  ct  Baccho."  But 
eating,  itself,  is  hardly  a  method  of  happiness  among  nor- 
mal men.  Above  certain  minima  of  food  value,  cleanli- 
ness and  palatability,  the  choiceness  of  the  food  makes 
(after  childhood)  a  negligible  difference  to  man's  mental 
adaptation.  No  normally  nourished  man  is  so  happy 
over  a  meal  as  a  dog  over  a  bone.  The  mightiest  trend 

*  Zwar  ich  habe  mir  ein  Zimmer 
Und  das  Zimmer  ist  sehr  klein 
Doch  es  konnen  darin  zweie 
Ganz  unbandig  glucklich  sein 

In  dem  einen,  kleinen  Zimmer.  .  .  . 

(Bierbaum.) 


292  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

of  animal  life  has  fallen  low.  It  would  seem  that  the 
energy  invested  in  the  animal's  quest  for  food  has  been 
transferred  or  "  sublimated  "  into  other  kinds  of  human 
activity.  The  dog's  happiness  in  the  bone  becomes  the 
man's  joy  in  his  work.  Such  a  process  can  indeed  be 
traced  below  the  human  species.  The  cat's  unbounded 
pleasure  at  the  mouse  it  has  caught  is  in  the  capture  for 
the  capture's  sake,  not  in  its  food  value. 

It  has  been  usual  to  place  much  of  this  access  of  pleas- 
ure in  work  to  the  credit  of  erotic  trends.  But  it  can 
hardly  be  supposed  that  joy  in  work  began  with  modern 
civilization.  Its  age  is  one  with  that  of  art.  It  is  older 
than  the  sexual  suppressions  to  which  achievements  of 
modern  civilization  have  been  credited.  The  energy  bal- 
anced by  the  joy  in  work  must  be  ascribed  to  a  more 
primitive  source.  Probably  this  access  of  joy  in  effort 
balances  the  depreciation  in  the  value  of  the  nutritive 
trends  for  normal  happiness.  The  affect  that  in  the  ani- 
mal  world  invests  food  makes  the  joy  of  work  in  man. 

The  sentimental  glamour  that  surrounds  "  work  "  is 
only  less  than  that  of  love  itself.  The  "  pleasure  at 
being  a  cause  "  is  not  dependent  on  the  amount  of  money 
earned  by  the  effect.  Nor  can  we  say  where  work 
for  others  stops  and  work  for  work's  sake  begins. 
Thus  the  relation  of  work  to  a  strictly  "  economic  "  trend 
is  ill-defined.  The  main  reasons  for  considering  it  as 
such  are  the  genetic  ones  above  mentioned. 

Work  presents  the  same  gradations  of  egoism  and  al- 
truism as  do  the  love-life  and  the  use  of  money.  Scho- 
lastic pursuits  furnish  the  more  purely  egoistic  satisfac- 
tions to  be  obtained  from  work.  The  altruism  of  pure 
science  is  more  remote  than  that  of  applied  science  or 
technology.  More  direct  service  still  is  performed  by 


BALANCING  FACTORS  293 

the  physician,  the  merchant,  the  transportation  officer. 
As  pointed  out  in  Chapter  I,  (p.  21),  no  objective  dif- 
ference in  the  value  of  these  pursuits  for  happiness  can 
be  discovered.  Each  is  capable  of  properly  balancing 
the  work-life  in  different  types  of  personality. 

It  is  well  said  that  the  world  pays  extravagantly  for  its 
luxuries,  liberally  for  its  amusements,  grudgingly  for  its  I 
necessities,  and  parsimoniously  for  its  spiritual  ministra-^l 
tions.     Thus  a  relation,  that  underlies  supply  and  de-^ 
mand,  exists  between  kind  of  work  and  material  return. 
Balancing  material  commands  the  greater  rewards.     It 
would  seem  that,  in  civilized  life,  the  fundamental  trends 
are  met  in  such  a  way  as  to  leave  much  unbalanced  energy. 
The  food  trend  is  met  simply  and  the  love-life  incom- 
pletely.    Hence  the  characteristic  demand  of  civilized 
life  for  balancing  material  in  literature,  art,  travel,  sport, 
etc.     Sidelight  on  the  place  of  religion  comes  in  an  ob- 
servation that  the  sales  of  the  Bible  have  inverse  ratio  to 
business  in  general.     In  other  words,  the  Bible  increases 
its  sales  when  people  have  less  money  to  spend.     Re-  1 
ligion  is  sought  when  other  helpers  fail  and  comforts   1 
flee,  but  other  balancing  material  is  preferred  while  pur- 
chasing power  remains. 

The  economic  trend  in  its  primary  definition  —  ac- 
cumulation  of  wealth  to  the  limit  of  ability  —  was  seen 
to  be  most  consistent  with  the  love-life.  That  is  a  prob- 
lem of  vocational  guidance.  Human  nature  harbors 
other  trends,  however,  that  are  inconsistent  with  the 
economic  trend.  Regressive  tendencies,  in  the  form  of 
asceticism,  oppose  the  economic  equally  with  the  love- 
life.  In  fasting  usages,  this  is  applied  directly  to  food. 
A  further  trend  is  directed  against  money  by  rationaliz- 
ing poverty  as  a  virtue.  Sumner  points  out  tfie  further 


894  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

inconsistency  of  this  rationalization,  since  it  makes  the 
individual  dependent  on  the  less  virtuous  who  have  money 
to  give.  In  modern  life,  the  trends  of  work  for  work's 
sake  are  often  inconsistent  with  the  economic  function  of 
work.  Egoistic  varieties  of  work  are  more  liable  to  this 
inconsistency  with  the  fundamental  economic  trend. 

Social  trends  are  shown  in  organisms  whose  normal 
actions  depend  on  the  presence  of  others  of  their  species. 
,    Common  ants  and  honeybees  are  called  social  animals, 
^  because  their  normal  nest-building,  securing  of  food-sup- 
ply and  propagation,  depend  on  the  cooperation  of  many 
bees  and  ants.     It  is  noted  that  powerful  and  predaceous 
animals,  like  the  tiger  or  hawk,  are  regularly  solitary, 
while  creatures  of   social  habits  are   weaker.     With  a 
social  habit,   pronounced  individual  strength  is  not  so 
necessary  to  survival  as  with  a  solitary  one. 

STAUFFACHER.     Verbunden    werden    auch    die    Schwache 
machtig. 

"   ,TELL.     Der  Starke  ist  am  machtigsten  allein. 
V    f>J 

X  11 
^V  J     ^°  etmcal  comparison  is  required  between  the  indi- 

'-vidual  giant  and  the  well  adjusted  member  of  the  group 
J.  strong  in  union.  Man  has  evolved  as  a  highly  social 
»\  ^  ~*  being.  The  fundamental  nature  of  man's  adaptations, 
r-oM  depending  on  mental  rather  than  physical  fitness,  plays 
v  ^  \*  directly  into  the  hands  of  social  trends.  Organized 
t  ^  groups  intelligently  directed  are  far  stronger  than  the 
S  sum  of  their  individual  powers,  from  battle  to  the  foot- 
•  .  ball  field.  The  social  trend  of  man  finds  its  sanction,  like 
a  v  p  private  property,  in  its  utility. 

The  trend  for  food  cannot  fill  man's  life,  because  if  it 
did,  he  would  not  seek  to  propagate  himself.  The  added 
sexual  trend  cannot  fill  it,  because  if  it  did,  he  would  lack 


BALANCING  FACTORS  295 

the  social  trends  decisively  useful  in  his  survival  and  de- 
velopment.    It  is  biologically  fitting  that  man  should  re- 
quire for  mental  balance,  not  only  economic  and  erotic 
satisfactions,   but  others  dependent  on  social  relations 
with  his  fellow  men.     Interdependence  is  the  price  of 
cooperation  which  gives  the  highest  force  in  the  contest   «/ 
with  nature,  as  well  as  against  aggression  by  the  for-  < 
eigner. 

The  social  trend,  or  herd  instinct  as  it  has  also  been 
called,  is  the  tendency  of  the  individual  to  act  in_cpn- 
formity  with  the  morft  pf  hfc  gfT"r  That  definition 
must  be  vague,  because  mores  differ  so  greatly  according 
to  age  and  place.  "If  two  planets  were  joined  in  one," 
Sumner  puts  it  forcibly,  "  their  inhabitants  could  not 
differ  more  widely  as  to  what  things  are  best  worth  seek- 
ing, or  what  ways  most  expedient  for  well  living."  The 
love-life,  on  the  other  hand,  is  practically  confined  to  ob-  X 
jects  of  opposite  sex,  and  family;  the  objects  of  the  y 
work-life  are  money  or  joy  in  work. 

As  we  see  it  now,  the  value  of  social  trends  for  human 
happiness  is  of  three  kinds;  to  be  summed  up  in  broad 
conceptions  of  the  words  paijcioligrn,  social  amusement 
and  social  service.  Under  the  first  head  are  included  a 
man's'leelTngs"  and  reactions  toward  his  political  group. 
Under  everyday  conditions  this  phase  of  the  social  trend 
has  no  very  positive  value  for  happiness.  People  then 
keep  the  law  as  they  eat ;  not  because  it  is  joyous,  but  be- 
cause it  is  expedient  to  do  so,  and  we  can  expect  to  find 
no  great  balancing  function  in  this  phase  of  the  social 
trend.  It  is  no  trend  to  absorb  much  of  our  free  energy. 
It  corresponds  more  to  the  eating  which  obviates  un- 
pleasantness, than  to  the  love  that  brings  joy. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  most  apparent  that  if  a  vigor- 


296  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

ous  state  is  threatened,  its  members  readily  respond  by 
collective  action  to  defend  it.  In  more  highly  organized 
states,  there  is  a  group  sanction  which  systematically 
allots  such  service  to  those  most  fitted  to  perform  it. 
Such  service  is  compulsory  in  the  same  sense  that  mar- 
riage is  compulsory;  it  is  the  best  response  to  an  in- 
evitable organic  need.  Then,  when  a  vigorous  state  is 
threatened,  the  capacity  of  the  social  trend  rises  without 
limit  to  take  up  energy  going  normally  to  erotic  or  eco- 
nomic trends.  Their  energy  is  diverted  to  patriotism, 
as  a  short  circuit  takes  the  power  from  a  street-car 
system. 

A  sanguinary  metaphor  may  be  taken  from  the  geological 
descriptions  of  how  a  stream  "  pirates "  the  waters  of 
another  stream,  or  "  decapitates  "  it.  If  two  streams  run 
down  opposite  sides  of  a  mountain  pass,  the  one  which 
flows  over  the  less  resistant  soil  will  deepen  its  valley  faster 
and  "  decapitate  "  the  other  stream  by  capturing  its  head- 
waters. As  the  water  follows  the  stream  bed  of  less 
resistance  7  and  the  electric  current  turns  from  the  high  re- 
sistant circuit  to  the  low  one,  so  does  a  social  trend  demon- 
strate its  least  resistance  in  the  piracy  or  decapitation  of 

7  If  an  obstructed  instinctive  life  is  compensated  through  an  af- 
fective symbol  (like  the  pet  dog  of  Chapter  IV),  it  is  well  known 
that  ultimately  the  affective  symbol  absorbs  the  energy  so  com- 
pletely that  little  or  none  is  available  for  the  fundamental  trend  when 
the  occasion  comes  to  exercise  it.  The  concept  of  decapitation  repre- 
sents this  as  follows : 

Suppose  that  social  convention  and  other  circumstances  interpose 
an  effective  barrier  to  the  outlet  of  the  love-life,  as  for  many  people 
they  do.  Then,  as  water  behind  a  dam,  the  energy  rises  until  it 
reaches  another  outlet,  as  in  love  for  the  typical  pet  dog.  Still  ob- 
structed at  the  primary  outlet,  it  begins  to  flow  out  through  this 
secondary  channel.  In  doing  so,  it  continually  deepens  that  channel, 
as  a  brook  flowing  through  its  ravine;  while  the  primary  channel, 
which  is  dry,  remains  at  its  former  level.  In  time,  this  secondary 
channel  is  so  deepened  that  its  outlet  is  below  the  level  of  the  original 
channel,  which  has  remained  dry.  Then,  even  if  the  obstruction 
is  taken  away,  there  will  be  no  outflow  through  the  primary  channel. 
It  has  been  decapitated,  its  energy  pirated,  by  the  less  obstructed 
trend.  The  capacity  for  living  out  the  more  fundamental  tendency 
is  lost. 


BALANCING  FACTORS  297 

erotic  and  economic  trends.    While  John  is  in  pursuit  of 
familial,  professional  and  recreational  interests,  his  people 
are  plunged  into  war.    Then  if  social  trends  in  the  nation  are     \ty'. 
superficial,  he  will  not  change  his  conduct,  reflecting  that  to 
offer  his  services  is  simply  to  sacrifice  himself  and  family  for 
some  shirker  to  usurp  his  hard  won  place  in  life.     The 
familial  and  economic  energies  will  not  be  pirated.     If,  how-   • 
ever,  the  nation  is  well  organized  through  strong  social  trends 
in  its  members,  economic  and  familial  trends  no  longer  domi- 
nate his  conduct.     Under  the  social  sanction  of  universal  ' 
service,  he  and  his  fellows  present  themselves  to  render  such 
aid  to  the  state  as  it  requires,  to  the  exclusion  of  economic 
and  familial  pursuits. 

The  concept  of  "  decapitation  "  of  trends  may  be  repre- 
sented more  schematically  in  this  way.  The  sum  of  vital 
energy  is  like  a  reservoir  of  water,  whose  supply  is  con- 
tinually pumped  into  it  from  below.  It  has  openings  at 
different  levels  to  release  the  energy  for  more  fundamental 
or  more  superficial  trends.  John's  need  for  food  is  at  a 
low  level,  but  takes  a  very  small  part  of  the  energy  stored  in 
the  reservoir.  The  outlet  of  autoerotic  trends  is  pretty 
well  plugged  now,  and  instead,  the  water  rises  till  it  meets 
the  great  sluice  gate  of  familial  trends.  Nor  does  this  carry 
away  all  his  abundant  energy,  but  the  water  rises  until  the 
inflow  of  energy  is  finally  balanced  by  the  minor  outlets  of 
fishing,  political  and  similar  interests.  Now  comes  the  war, 
flinging  open  the  gate  of  social  trends.  It  may  be  so  small 
and  high  that  no  water  reaches  it.  But  if,  as  we  abundantly 
see  it,  it  is  great  and  deep,  the  interests  of  fishing,  politics, 
mathematics,  even  family,  are  quickly  decapitated  of  their 
energy. 

The  most  primitive  trends  of  self-preservation  are 
robbed  of  their  energy  to  operate.  One  has  but  to  think 
of  the  self-immolation  of  Europe,  and  the  lesser  but  more 
individually  voluntary  sacrifices  of  our  civil  war.  Such  ^ 
a  diversion  of  energy  from  individual  to  social  trends 
takes  place  at  the  command  of  rulers  in  much  the  same 
way  as  Niagara  is  diverted  to  electric  turbines  at  the  com- 
mand of  the  engineer.  He  could  not  command  Niagara 


298  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

without    gravity.     Without    instinctive    willingness    to 
sacrifice  self  for  group,  there  could  be  no  ruler  to  com-j 
mand  war  or  peace. 

The  social  trend  here  runs  counter  to  practically  all 
the  trends  serving  erotic  or  economic  instincts.  It  re- 
mains consistent  with  the  instinct  of  pugnacity;  though 
some  think  that  modern  war  conditions,  in  which  there  is 
less  contact  between  enemies,  make  this  direct  access  of 
energy  to  the  social  trend  unimportant.  Joy  in  death 
for  group  appears  as  the  summit  of  altruism  ("  Greater 
love,"  etc.),  upon  the  antipodes  of  egoistic  tendencies. 
Between  this  extreme  of  altruism  and  the  extreme  of  in- 
troverted egoism  (as  that  of  the  catatonic  stupor),  there 
are  many  grades  in  the  balance  of  altruism  and  egoism 
in  personalities.  There  are  people  outside  institution 
doors  who  exist  but  for^  creature  comforts,  incapable  of 
deep  relationships  with  fellow  men.~  TKeir  mental  bal- 
ance is  struck  at  a  low-level  autoerotism,  but  they  are  pot 
necessarily  unhappy,  in-  it.  An  epicure  in  pleasures  of 
sense  or  intellect  may,  in  their  pursuit,  produce  economic 
or  artistic  creations  that  the  world  values ;  and  represent 
to  the  world  an  autoerotism  of  higher  level.  Marriage 
and  other  social  relationships  that  limit  independence  are 
themselves  inconsistent  with  the  strictly  "  self  "-realiza- 
tion of  autoerotic  natures.  In  all  sexual  relationship 
there  is  some  limitation  of  egoistic  trends,  which  becomes 
pronounced  when  a  family  rears  many  children.  Among 
insects  this  may  go  so  far  as  the  parents'  dying  to  create 
the  offspring.  Man  does  not  normally  do  this,  but  he 
dies  for  the  preservation  of  the  group.  Where  he  sacri- 
fices but  part  of  his  egoism  for  the  family,  he  sacrifices 
his  very  existence  for  the  group  (and  often  the  family's 
so  far  as  he  is  concerned).  When  the  Decalogue  bids 


BALANCING  FACTORS  399 

us  not  kill,  steal,  or  commit  adultery,  it  expresses  social 
trends  in  useful  restraint  of  individual  ones.  But  in  full 
force  the  social  trend  decapitates  both  of  these,  saying 
not  only  thon  shalt  kill,  but  thou  shalt  be  killed,  that  thy 
neighbor  may  live  more  abundantly. 

As  familial  trends  "  decapitate  "  autoerotic,  and  balance 
economic,  ones,  so  does  the  social  trend  at  once  balance 
and  decapitate  autoerotic,  familial  and  economic  trends. 
The  joy  of  dying  for  fifOUp  must  be  accepted  as  real. 
Its  expressions  cannot  be  set  down  to  poetic  hyperbole. 
It  bears  tokens,  however,  of  a  divided,  origin.  Sentiment 
marks  the  sweetness  of  dying  for  one's  country,  though  ' 
the  effective  service  of  one's  country  is  not  in  dying, 
but  infilling  the  enemy  for  it.  Indeed,  patriotic  senti- 
ment is  replete  with  the  "  death-wish  " ;  the  hero  regrets 
that  he  has  but  one  life  to  give  for  his  country,  not  that 
he  has  killed  so  few  of  its  enemies.  This  is  but  another 
token  that  life  is  not  to  man  the  ultimately  precious  thing 
that  other  animals  account  it,  but  that  there  are  strong 
forces  in  us  making  for  its  voluntary  termination,  which 
sometimes  become  so  strong  that  they  result  in  suicide. 
We  may  look  upon  the  joy  in  death  for  group,  therefore, 
as  determined  partly  by  an  active  social  trend  of  service 
to  the  group,  and  nartly  hv  a  pF"*6*""*  c^liny  f^  i»gra™»  * 
the  _tiink  nf  life;  to  be  "  one  with  Cumberland  forever," 
which  tendencies  reinforce  each  other  against  the  indi- 
vidual will  to  live.  The  simple  willingness  to  die  for 

one's  country  is  not  a  social  trend,  so  much  as  a  regres-   .     ' ' 
7        i       ,  "*      .       ..     , '.  '         ...  -l 

sion  that  is  rationalized  in  patriotic  sentiment.  /•>  ^ 

The  patriotism  of  non-combatants  in  war  is  reeii  forced 
neither  by  the  instinct  of  pugnacity  nor  by  the  "  death-* 
wish."     For  them  the  task  of  living  is  simply  increased 
in  severity.     Yet  the  social  trend  can  balance  these  pri- 


900  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

vations  also.  A  spirit  of  thankfulness  is  reported  among 
the  women  of  a  combatant  people  that  they  live  in  a  time 
of  opportunity  for  such  sacrifice. 

It  is  only  in  group-conflicts  that  social  trends  take  on 
this  supreme  significance  for  the  mass  of  men.  In  this 
respect  the  sentiment  of  patriotism  is  in  a  class  by  itself. 
The  possibly  regressive  element  in  patriotism  makes  it 
noteworthy  that  the  value  for  human  happiness  of  service 
to  the  state  is  greatest  precisely  when  the  greatest  re- 
nunciation is  involved.  Social  trends  may  be  so  strong  as 
to  afford  a  general  pride  in  service  to  the  state.  A 
European  will  conceive  more  readily  than  an  American 
how  an  honest  John  might  prefer  a  $4,000  state  position, 
Tather  than  one  of  $10,000  with  a  private  organization. 
The  ambition  to  serve  the  state  may  thus  lead  to  incon- 
sistencies with  individual  trends,  apart  from  the  supreme 
tests  of  war. 

When  unrequited  -service  is  systematically  rendered  to 
unrelatedjindividuals,  which  is  of  such  a  character  as  is 
normally  discharged  among  related  individuals,  this  comes 
under  a  technical  conception  of  "  social  service."  It  is 
not  confined  to  humanity.  It  has  been  observed  of  breed- 
ing swallows,  whose  nests  were  destroyed  in  their  absence, 
that  after  many  hours'  searching  for  them,  they  would 
fly  into  the  nests  of  other  birds,  and  attempt  to  feed  the 
young,  even  though  attacked  by  the  actual  parents.  Thus 

(does  the  principle  of  social  service  operate  as  a  balancing 
factor  in  the  animal  world.  The  birds  take  thought  for 
other  nests  because  they  have  none  of  their  own.  On 
both  human  and  animal  levels  this  is  an  attempt  of  the 
mental  organism  to  meet  a  lack  of  balance  among  the  per- 
sonal instincts,  by  analogous  actions  toward  foreign  in- 
dividuals. 


BALANCING  FACTORS  301 

Recreations,  as  such,  do  not  hold  a  commanding  place 
in  the  balance  of  human  trends,  but  most  of  what  they 
have  is  social.  The  normal  attitude  toward  life  has 
created  the  sayings  that  pleasure  shared  is  pleasure 
doubled,  and  that  happiness  was  born  a  twin.  Social 
games  predominate  vastly  over  solitary  ones.  The  lat- 
ter do  not  even  maintain  themselves  as  such,  but  develop 
"  social  solitaires."  Who  prefers  to  go  alone  to  the  play, 
the  concert  or  the  golf-links?  The  social  trend  also 
lends  sanction  to  a  form  of  satisfaction  otherwise  con- 
demned ;  nothing  like  the  objkxjuy  attaches  to  drinking  in 
company  that  attaches  to  drinking  alone.  Persons  hav- 
ing fads  in  common  (although  these  be  not  in  themselves 
social,  e.g.,  an  interest  in  natural  history)  form  societies 
to  pursue  them  together.  Clubs  are  formed  that  permit 
closer  relations  with  selected  companions.  While  such 
interests  need  not  be  very  deep,  their  wide  diffusion  makes 
it  well  to  mention  them  among  the  contributions  of  social 
trends  to  mental  adaptation. 

Except  for  the  instance  of  war,  the  social  trend  is  in 
the  main  consistent  with  economic  and  familial  trends,  \ 
and  reen  forces  more  than  inhibits  them.  To  the  social 
cooperation  of  men  the  race  owes  such  economic  conquest 
over  nature  as  it  has  achieved.  Greater  and  more  varied 
economic  satisfactions  are  possible  to  the  average  family 
through  its  relations  to  the  community  than  would  be 
possible  to  it  alone.  Elementary  conveniences  like  lights, 
sewage,  transportation  systems  and  social  amusements 
establish  this.  Economic  and  social  trends  play  into  each 
other's  hands.  The  greater  the  production  and  diffusion 
of  economic  necessities,  the  less  fierce  does  the  competi- 
tion for  them  become,  and  the  more  room  there  is  for  the 
development  of  humanitarian  and  social  sentiments 


303  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

toward  one's  fellow  men.8  Conversely,  humanitarian 
feelings  draw  men  together  for  common  ends,  as  is 
requisite  for  great  and  lasting  control  over  nature.  As 
economic  evolution  proceeds,  it  becomes  more  profitable 
to  the  strong  that  the  weak  should  have  more  freedom; 
because  then  they  cooperate  more  effectively  for  the  sub- 
jugation of  nature.  Thus  slavery  and  serfdom  give 
place  to  freer  social  institutions. 

Allusion  has  just  been  made  (p.  296)  to  the  counter- 
balancing of  erotic  and  familial  trends  by  social  ones. 
Clearly  a  general  trend  toward  social  relationships  in- 
creases the  possible  choices  which  can  be  made,  and  is 
thus  consistent  with  the  fullest  love-life.  It  introduces 
rivalries  which  may  be  disturbing  to  the  individual  while 
helping  to  select  the  race.  Social  usages  also  restrict  the 
choice  of  partners  in  various  ways.  They  enjoin  celi- 
bacy for  certain  classes ;  they  impose  now  a  sanction,  now 
a  tabu  upon  promiscuous  relationships ;  they  select  classes 
(totemism)  among  which  one  may  or  may  not  choose 
partners.  Most  of  these  have  other-worldly  rationaliza- 
tions which  are  presented  upon  religious  grounds. 

Where  the  family  is  the  social  unit,  the  fabric  of  society 
depends  on  the  stability  of  sexual  relationships.  If  ac- 
tions inconsistent  with  such  stability  are  not  prevented 
by  the  mores,  the  society  degenerates.  Society  has  now 
to  deal  with  a  lack  of  balance  between  erotic  and  economic 
trends.  The  period  at  which  it  is  economically  possible 
to  found  the  family  is  pushed  far  beyond  the  period  of 
erotic  maturity.  Until  this  balance  is  restored,  rigid  sex 
mores  are  not  to  be  looked  for  among  civilized  peo- 
ples. 

The  foregoing  material  leaves  us  with  these  chief  con- 

*  Sumner,  "  Folkways,"  59- 


BALANCING  FACTORS  303 

siderations.  Happiness  is  the  conscious  phase  of  mental 
adaptation.  Mental  adaptation  consists  in  a  balance  be- 
tween the  energy  the  organism  has  to  spend,  and  the  out- 
lets for  expending  it.  The  outlets  useful  for  this  pur- 
pose are  balancing  factors.  We  paralleled  these  to  the 
balancing  function  of  the  flywheel  in  a  steam  engine,  or 
the  weight  of  the  armature  in  an  electric  motor.  Com- 
paring vital  energy  to  the  electric  current,  we  represented 
different  trends  of  conduct  as  different  electric  motors, 
which  could  take  up  more  or  less  of  the  energy  to  be 
spent.  Mental  adaptation  corresponds  to  the  efficient 
taking  up  of  vital  energy  in  these  trends.  Money  plays 
the  same  role  in  facilitating  their  operation  as  oil  does  in 
that  of  machines. 

Coming  to  the  topical  consideration  of  different  human 
trends,  we  examined  some  of  the  chief  ways  in  which 
men  seek  happiness.  We  saw  that  it  might  be  sought  in 
selfish,  egoistic  ways,  or  in  unselfish,  altruistic  ways;  but 
that  it  is  more  frequently  found  in  the  latter.  We  dis- 
cussed the  bearing  of  this  upon  the  love-life,  which  reaches 
its  fullest  development  in  maintenance  of  family.  In 
this,  and  in  subsequent  discussion  of  economic  and  social 
trends,  we  followed  the  plan  of  describing  what  sort  of 
reaction  the  trends  involved,  what  their  respective  value 
for  human  happiness  appears  to  be,  and  the  ways  in  which 
they  are  consistent  or  inconsistent  with  other  important 
trends  of  personality.  We  observed  the  mutual  con- 
sistency of  the  fully  developed  erotic  and  economic  trends. 
An  ascetic  negation  of  economic  values  is  inconsistent 
with  the  love-life. 

Turning  to  the  economic  trend,  we  observed  egoistic 
and  altruistic  methods  of  happiness  in  the  expenditure 
of  wealth;  how  the  egoistic  shades  into  the  altruistic. 


304.  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

Its  direct  value  for  happiness  is  not  often  great,  though 
we  saw  that  it  is  important  in  opening  up  other  methods 
of  satisfaction.  The  pursuit  of  wealth  on  the  other  hand, 
carrying  with  it  the  "  joy  in  work,"  has  a  much  larger 
value  for  happiness.  The  suggestion  was  made  that,  as 
we  look  upon  modern  civilization  as  the  product  of  energy 
derived  from  sexual  inhibitions,  so  may  the  joy  in  work 
represent  an  affective  transfer  from  a  more  animal  joy 
in  food,  that  is,  be  a  "  sublimation  "  of  nutritive  trends. 
The  chief  inconsistencies  with  economic  trends  are  those 
of  asceticism. 

The  biological  significance  of  social  trends  was  briefly 
pointed  out.  Social  trends  assume  their  greatest  impor- 
tance for  mental  adaptation  when  the  social  group  is 
threatened  in  war.  Then  familial  and  economic  trends, 
even  elementary  trends  for  self-preservation,  are  "  de- 
capitated "  of  their  energy ;  and  the  individual  gives  his 
life  for  the  group  under  the  trend  of  patriotism.  But 
this  trend  is  probably  reen forced  by  a  regressive,  "  death- 
wish  "  admixture.  The  value  for  happiness  of  service  to 
the  state,  as  such,  varies  among  different  groups,  being 
a  measure  of  their  social  solidarity.  The  technical 
"  social  service,"  not  rendered  to  the  state  but  to  indi- 
viduals, is  not  a  fundamental  phase  of  the  social  trend, 
but  has  value  for  happiness  simply  in  balancing  obstructed 
personal  trends. 

The  minor  balancing  values  in  recreations  are  domi- 
nated by  social  trends.  Social  trends  are  essentially  con- 
sistent with  economic  trends  in  that  they  permit  greater 
accumulations  of  wealth  and  greater  satisfactions  in  its 
use.  They  are  also  consistent  with  erotic  trends,  in  their 
widening  of  the  range  of  selection.  In  special  instances, 
like  the  totem  or  sacerdotal  celibacy,  they  obstruct  a 


BALANCING  FACTORS  305 

natural  selection.  Owing  to  the  lack  of  balance  in  civ-j 
ilized  life  between  economic  and  sexual  trends,  the  social/ 
sanctions  of  erotic  relationships  cannot  be  of  the  most^ 
rigid  character. 

We  proceed  now  from  the  point  that  mental  adapta- 
tion is  given  in  balanced  reactions,  and  by  our  survey  of 
how  different  trends  contribute  to  the  balance  of  reac- 
tions, to  the  final  considerations  of  what  controllable 
factors  in  the  environment  —  educational  policies,  in 
other  words  —  are  the  most  consistent  with  the  purpose 
of  adaptation  and  the  attainment  of  happiness. 

This  survey  of  mental  adjustments  began  with  a  com- 
parison of  vital  energy  to  electrical  force.  Faulty  mental 
adjustments  were  compared  to  misapplications  and  short- 
circuitings  of  current.  We  may  briefly  develop  a  final 
element  in  this  analogy.  There  are  many  kinds  of  elec- 
tric current,  high  and  low  voltage,  direct  and  alternating 
of  different  frequencies.  When  the  dynamo  produces 
electricity,  it  produces  the  sort  for  which  the  generator 
is  wound.  But  this  kind  of  current  may  well  be  unsuited 
to  every  kind  of  work  the  current  is  to  do.  The  best 
kind  of  current  to  send  a  long  distance  is  not  the  best 
adapted  to  do  work  after  it  gets  there.  Street-car  current 
is  not  the  best  for  fan  motor  purposes.  For  this  reason, 
the  current  that  comes  from  the  generator  is  passed 
through  special  instruments,  known  as  transformers,  each 
one  of  which  changes  the  original  current  passing  through 
it,  into  whatever  kind  the  consumer  needs  for  his  par- 
ticular work.  Only  by  passing  through  the  proper  trans- 
former system  is  the  current  able  to  perform  the  service, 
on  the  payment  for  which  the  plant  depends  for  its 
existence. 

The  same  is  true  of  the  energy  of  life.     We  come  to 

81 


306  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

know  it  only  after  it  has  passed  through  certain  trans- 
formers, and  performs  the  work  of  our  existence.  Not 
only  must  we  have  sufficient  energy  to  do  the  work  of  our 
lives,  but,  like  the  lighting  and  street-car  companies,  we 
must  have  the  power  in  the  form  in  which  we  can  make 
best  use  of  it.  Take  two  men  of  equal  endowment,  and 
train  one  as  a  lawyer,  the  other  as  a  physician.  The  one 
has  transformers  to  convert  his  energy  into  legal  practice, 
the  other  into  the  healing  art.  But  the  motor  of  the 
healing  art  will  not  run  on  legal  current.  Neither  could 
do  the  work  of  the  other,  any  more  than  ordinary  fan 
motor  or  lighting  current  operates  street-cars.  A  third 
man,  without  training,  can  do  only  the  simplest  manual 
tasks.  He  has  no  finely  adjusted  transformers,  and  has 
but  the  crudest  sort  of  energy  to  dispose  of. 

A  man  fitted  for  life  is  then  like  an  electric  plant  not 

only  well  built,  but  equipped  with  such  transformers  as 

will  give  current  to  run  the  motors  he  can  use.     This  is 

the  right  object  of  all  that  control  of  experience  which 

.    we  term  education.     Education  is,   or  ought  to  be,  a 

\  control  of  experience  that  better  fits  the  personality  for 

\  the  duties  and  privileges  of  life. 

This  is  founded  on  mastery  of  one's  love-life  and  eco- 
nomic existence.  There  is  no  mastery  of  fate  or  cap- 
taincy of  soul  without  them.  They  are  its  concrete 
tokens.  Normal  maturing  or  "  progression  "  means  the 
achievement  of  these  in  greater  or  less  degree.  Opposed 
to  such  achievements  are  the  regressional  trends  of  auto- 
erotism,  asceticism,  and  the  like.  The  concrete  objects  of 
regressional  trends  are  the  parents.  These  attachments 
are  not  innate.  "  Kinship  is  purely  a  matter  of  fact  and 
history,"  writes  Sumner.  "  There  is  no  '  natural  af- 
fection.' There  is  habit  and  familiarity,  and  the  example 


V 


BALANCING  FACTORS  307 

and  exhortation  of  the  parents  may  inculcate  notions  of 
duty."     On  the  other  hand,  these  attachments  are  greatly     . 
strengthened  by  the  long  and  impressionable  period  dur-   \ 
ing  which  they  operate.     Mental  growth,  or  progression, 
involves  the  breaking  up  of  the  infantile  attachments 
The  right  task  of  education  is  to  insure  this  in  e very- 
possible  way. 

If  Holmes  remarked  that  a  boy's  education  should  be- 
gin with  his  grandfather,  Freud  has  said,  in  effect,  that  it  * 
is  ended  with  his  first  trousers.  He  expresses  a  proper 
surprise  that,  for  the  formation  of  character,  we  lay  much 
stress  on  heredity  and  the  education  of  later  years,  and 
relatively  little  on  what  happens  in  tji?  jnfaqtilf  Yfar<t 
In  that  respect,  the  child  is  also  the  father  of  the  man, 
more  intimately  than  the  progenitor  indeed.  There  is  a 
growing  conviction  that  the  mental  events  of  infantile 
life  are  of  far  more  significance  for  adult  personality 
than  we  have  supposed,  and  that  they  deserve  far  more 
care  than  we  have  been  giving  them  in  proportion  to  the 
later  years. 

Thus  an  important,  if  negative,  part  of  educational 
policy  is  the  avoidance  by  elders  of  such  conduct  as  tends 
to  promote  "  regressive  fixations "  in  the  child.  Re- 
gressive fixations  are  transformers  whose  current  is  of 
little  value  in  adult  life.  In  illustration  of  such  conduct, 
Pfister  warns  strongly  against  excessive  organic  intima-  ^- 
cies  between  parent  and  infant.  It  is,  of  course,  the 
mother  who  is  naturally  concerned  here.  It  is  generally 
bad  for  the  child  to  be  taken  into  bed  with  the  parent. 
To  have  the  child  sleep  in  the  same  room  with  parents  is 
especially  unwise  after  the  first  year;  observation  of  the 
parents'  erotic  reactions  has  a  very  deleterious  effect  for 
them  at  this  time.  Even  ordinary  caresses  in  the  pres- 


308  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

ence  of  the  child  are  often  to  be  strictly  avoided.9  The 
child  is  made  an  "  erotic  plaything."  As  this  is  uni- 
formly bad  for  the  child,  it  cannot  be  regarded  as  an 
effective  token  of  mother  love.  Nor  does  it  arise  in  this 
\  way,  but  rather  to  supply  the  balance  of  an  incomplete 
love-life  toward  the  husband. 

A  corresponding  result  is  reached  if  the  father  exag- 
gerates his  protective  role.  Ferenczi 10  reports  this  in  two 
women  patients  whose  fathers  were  also  their  teachers. 
A  man's  organic  over-tendernesses  toward  relatives  or 
children,  more  especially  daughters,  are  also  a  natural 
balancing  factor  of  incompleteness  in  marital  life, 
v  but  inconsistent  with  the  mental  welfare  of  their  ob- 
jects. 

The  general  result  is  to  fix  the  child's  associations  of 
important  organic  and  other  satisfactions  with  the  pres- 
ence of  the  parents.  This  hampers  the  developmental 
transference  of  their  affects  to  the  objects  outside  the 
family  to  whom  they  will  properly  belong. 

We  may  look  for  clear  examples  of  parental  fixations 
among  only  children,  as  these  are  naturally  quite  subject 
to  the  influences  that  bring  them  about.  We  owe  to 
Brill  such  a  study  of  adjustments  to  life  among  only 
children.  He  reports  observations  n  of  400  such,  172 
men  and  228  women,  ranging  from  1 8  to  68  years,  mostly 
psychoneurotic  patients.  Their  median  age  was  34,  i.e., 
the  same  number  younger  and  older.  Only  93  had  mar- 
ried; but  the  significance  of  this  fact  is  limited  by  our 
ignorance  of  how  early  and  frequent  marriage  is  in 
psychoneurotics  who  are  not  only  or  favorite  children. 


»  Pfister,  D.  psa.  Met.,  475. 

»°  Jahrb.  f.  psa.  u.  psp.  Forsch.     i  (1909),  449. 

11  Brill,  "  Psychanalysis  "  (1912),  253-266 


BALANCING  FACTORS  309 

Some  36  per  cent  were  characterized  by  aberrant  erotic 
trends  such  as  homosexuality,  anesthesia,  impotence,  ex- 
hibitionism and  the  like.  He  considers  that  only  chil- 
dren or  favorite  children  markedly  prevail  in  these 
classes. 

Besides  these  deficiencies  in  sexual  adaptation,  the  re- 
gressive fixations  bring  about  a  lack  of  adaptability  to 
competitors  in  life.  The  only  child  is  especially  asso- 
ciated with  adults  to  the  exclusion  of  children  of  his  own 
age.  This  eliminates  from  his  life  the  normal  play- 
period  through  which,  sharing  the  childish  rivalries,  quar- 
rels, triumphs  and  disappointments  of  his  equals,  he 
should  pass  naturally  to  the  more  serious  rivalries  of 
adult  life.  He  becomes  precocious  in  "book"  knowl- 
edge which  never  has  the  test  of  application,  and  de- 
velops habits  of  deference  to  elders  which  he  finds  it  very 
difficult  to  cast  off  when  his  adult  competition  with  them 
begins.  From  being  habitually  over-indulged,  great 
sensitiveness  to  slights  develops;  thus  Brill  mentions  an 
only  daughter  who  attempted  suicide  "  because  her  best 
friend  had  received  more  attention  than  she  at  a  social 
gathering."  He  draws  a  very  pretty  parallel  between 
these  traits  of  the  individual  spoiled  child,  and  the  in- 
ferior social  adjustment  long  shown  in  "  the  only  and 
favorite  child  of  Jehovah,  the  Jewish  race." 

In  looo  cases  of  repeated  delinquency,  Healy  found 
119  cases  in  which  the  delinquent  was  an  only  child. 
This  is  slightly  the  largest  group  of  single  delinquents 
from  all  families  in  his  table.  Its  interpretation  is  lim- 
ited until  we  know  the  general  frequency  in  that  social 
group  of  one  child  families  compared  to  larger  ones.  As 
Healy  indicates,  it  is  questionable  whether  the  conditions 
which  are  supposed  to  surround  an  only  child  make  espe- 


310  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

daily  for  delinquency.     They  would  not  seem  conducive 
to  the  more  active  type  of  offenses. 

Parental  fixations  possess  a  share  of  salutary  proper- 
ties for  the  child.  They  make  his  satisfactions  depend- 
ent on  an  outside  object,  i.e.,  the  parents,  and  not  on 
satisfactions  from  himself.  It  has  been  noted  that  the 
child  has  about  him  a  number  of  sources  for  such  gratifi- 
cations, which  are  often  things  indifferent,  even  repulsive 
to  us  in  later  life.  Infantile  thumbsucking  is  a  primitive 
manifestation.  They  center  largely  about  excretory 
functions.  Some  authorities  see  vestiges  of  them  in  such 
practices  as  picking  the  nose  or  biting  the  nails.  The 
tenderness  of  parents  plays  a  useful  role  in  freeing  the 
energy  from  these  "  autohedonic  "  paths  of  discharge, 
and  transferring  it,  but  not  permanently,  to  themselves. 
Pfister  therefore  warns  with  equal  earnestness  against  an 
opposite  extreme  of  harshness  in  the  parents: 12 

The  child  must  learn  to  bring  his  love-life  under  external 
control.  ...  If  the  child  is  repulsed  by  the  parents,  .  .  . 
the  child  must  again  transfer  from  the  mother  the  affects 
already  associated  with  her  through  her  functions  of  feeding 
and  bodily  care;  and  unless  some  outside  carrier  of  this 
affect,  such  as  a  grandmother  or  a  teacher,  is  available,  the 
parental  repulses  result  in  introversion.  We  know  that 
thereby  the  dangers  of  misanthropy,  shut-in-ness,  eccentricity 
and  life-weariness  are  brought  near;  moral  development,  the 
unfolding  of  personality  and  altruism  are  imperiled. 

The  following  words  by  Miss  Tobin 1S  of  Chicago 
closely  parallel  Pfister's  remarks.  The  different  con- 
nection which  suggests  them  adds  to  their  pertinence. 

In  all  schools  are  found  children  who  do  not  "  fit  in  "  with 
the  regular  work.  They  are  unresponsive;  cannot  work  in 

12  D.  psa.  Met.,  462-463. 
^Psychol.  Clinic,  9  (1916),  266. 


BALANCING  FACTORS  311 

groups ;  are  irritable  or  over-sensitive ;  will  not  play,  rather 
brood  in  corners;  are  hostile  to  society.  Sometimes  they 
show  a  tendency  to  damage  things  or  torment  animals  or 
their  companions. 

They  are  individualistic.  Every  command  must  be  given 
separately  to  them.  They  will  not  listen  unless  directly 
addressed ;  and  will  not  respond.  The  result  is  that  either 
their  undirected  energy  takes  the  form  of  mischief  and 
they  become  incorrigible,  or  they  shrink  back  into  themselves 
and  become  apathetic,  sitting  in  their  places  with  no  interest, 
but  conscious  of  the  indifference  of  their  companions. 

We  surely  can  appreciate  Miss  Tobin's  concept  of 
"  undirected  energy,"  and  the  antisocial  outlets  for  its 
attempted  balance.     Whether  the  regressive  and  egoistic 
reactions  so  well  described  by  her  are  the  result  of  pa- 
rental fixations  or  of  the  more  primitive  autohedonic  ones, 
the  prophylactic  lies  in  the  normal  play-life  of  the  child. 
Science  can  add  nothing  to  the  social  verdict  that  the  best  I 
laboratory  of  mental  adaptation  is  a  family  of  brothers/ 
and  sisters.     He  was  a  wise  counsellor  who  advised  the 
young  man  to  marry  a  girl  who  had  many  such. 

Outside  of  this,  the  great  counterweight  of  parental 
fixations  is  the  school.  Most  considerations  point  to  the 
wisdom  of  introducing  it  as  early  as  possible,  not  so  much 
for  the  sake  of  its  formal  discipline,  as  for  its  natural 
commingling  of  many  children  freed  from  parental  pro- 
tection and  restraints,  on  equal  terms.  In  the  kinder- 
garten age  the  inevitable,  but  still  weak,  parental  or  primi- 
tive autohedonic  fixations  quickly  break  down  under  the 
stress  of  normal  rivalries,  no  less  intense  for  being  child- 
ish. In  the  school,  more  particularly  the  boarding  school 
and  the  college,  these  rivalries  are  gradually  changed  into 
forms  more  resembling  the  actual  struggle  for  existence. 

Before  proceeding  to  these,  two  other  points  in  parental 
relationship  may  be  mentioned.  We  know  that  egoism  is 


/ 


MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

natural  and  healthy  in  the  child,  and  that  altruism  comes 
with  maturity.  The  mistake  of  forcing  the  growth  of 
altruism  is  perhaps  not  so  frequent  as  unfortunate  when 
it  occurs.  Such,  for  example,  would  be  the  attempt  to 
train  the  child  to  give  a  share  —  sometimes  ridiculously 
large  —  of  its  pocket  money  to  some  charity.  No  normal 
child  does  this  ungrudgingly.  It  would  be  no  more  ab- 
surd to  have  the  child  marry,  and  expect  it  to  lead  a 
normal  love-life.  The  will  to  these  sacrifices  is  a  part 
of  adult  trends.  Two  results  are  possible.  One  is  a 
form  of  "over-compensation"  (Ch.  IV).  The  child 
grows  up  to  be  stingy,  as  the  child  tantalized  with  un- 
shared delicacies  becomes  a  selfish  gourmet,  or  the  once 
oppressed  tenant  becomes  a  harsh  landlord.  Otherwise 
an  exaggerated  altruism  develops  that  well-nigh  cripples 
him  for  competition.  In  view  of  children's  imitative 
tendencies,  it  is  an  additional  precaution,  for  parents  not 
to  obtrude  their  benevolences  upon  their  children's  notice. 
The  essential  point  is  that  such  altruistic  motives  should 
Y  not  be  cultivated  in  children,  as  involve  any  notable  sacri- 
fices on  their  own  side.  It  perverts  their  normal  instinc- 
tive life  to  do  so. 

A  normal  self-assurance  is  generally  conceded  to  be  the 
most  important  conscious  phase  of  one's  mental  endow- 
ment. Compared  to  real  incompetence,  the  feeling  of 
,/*  inferiority  is  about  as  difficult  a  Tfarrier  to  achievement,] 
and  a  far  more  difficult  one  to  happiness.  An  easy  way 
to  breed  it  in  the  child  is  to  prevent  him  from  sharing  in 
common  sorts  of  play  because  of  dangers  which  they 
may  have.  The  child  wants  to  do  what  he  sees  his  fel- 
lows enjoying,  and  at  once  feels  himself  "  different "  if 
parental  authority  interferes.  The  normal  play-life  of 
children,  from  skating  to  football,  is  bound  up  with  some 


BALANCING  FACTORS  313 

amount  of  bodily  risk.  The  child  may  be  prevented  from 
sharing  them,  by  direct  prohibition  or  especially  by  lurid 
pictures  of  the  dangers  they  involve.  Then  the  child, 
observing  that  normal  children  can  do  these  things  while 
he  may  not,  having  them  pointed  out  as  fearful  to  him 
while  they  are  clearly  not  so  to  his  fellows,  can  scarcely 
react  otherwise  than  by  feeling  inferior  to  his  fellows  in 
their  natural  activities.  Sissies  are  made,  not  born ;  and 
if  they  are  not  to  be  made,  the  child  must  be  allowed,  if 
not  encouraged,  to  take  the  normal  risks  of  childhood 
play.  The  custom  is  happily  waning  of  letting  young 
children  find  enjoyment  in  the  wanton  use  of  explosives. 
Yet  so  common  sense  a  deprivation  as  this  would  work 
harm  if  not  balanced  in  the  pursuit  of  a  similar  but  more 
productive  sport,  as  the  use  of  firearms.  This  is  a  normal 
ambition  in  every  boy,  not  to  be  thwarted,  but  rather  used 
to  inculcate  steadiness  of  *'  nerve,"  mechanical  deftness 
and  the  care  of  valued  objects.14  A  child's  enthusiasm 
for  bodily  skills  is  also,  in  the  hands  of  an  honest  parent, 
a  deadly  weapon  against  pernicious  habits,  from  too  fast 
eating  to  masturbation. 

The  main  thing  is  the  child's  willing  competition  in  the 
natural  strivings  of  his  fellows.  If  he  shies  at  these, 
it  means  a  persistence  of  parental  or  primitive  autohe- 
donic  fixations.  To  shame  the  child  is  simply  to  confirm 
an  existing  sense  of  inadequacy.  "  Now  swim,  ye  little 
divil,  swim!"  cried  a  big  Irishman  on  flinging  a  seven 
year-old  into  deep  water  after  less  coercive  and  less  suc- 
cessful trials  —  and  he  swam.  The  adult  situation  of 
"  root,  hog,  or  die  "  is  quite  reproducible  for  childhood, 
except  that  we  do  not  make  him  root  for  the  same  things. 
A  wholesome  forcing  that  can  always  be  effective  short 

14"Der  Soldat  soil  sein  Gewehr  schatzen  wie  seine  Braut!" 


814?  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

of  brutality  presents  the  wisest  management  of  such 
cases.  It  is  not  the  child  we  are  breaking,  but  regression. 
We  are  simply  reenforcing  the  progressional,  healthy 
trends  necessarily  present  in  the  child,  against  the  tend- 
encies that  compass  his  undoing.  The  greater  satisfac- 
tions will  be  found  in  the  more  normal  pursuits,  as  he  is 
trained  to  follow  them  effectively. 

The  self-confidence  toward  nature  that  comes  with  skill 
in  making  a  box,  building  a  fire,  paddling  a  canoe  or 
hitting  a  mark,  must  be  supplemented  by  self-assurance 
in  competition  with  fellow  beings.  This  comes  only  by 
doing  well  things  of  which  they  can  see  the  value.  Jack 
will  not  be  better  assured  among  them  for  a  perfect  spell- 
ing lesson,  or  a  prize  for  never  being  late  at  school.  His 
pride  in  these  accomplishments  simply  builds  a  teacher- 
fixation  instead  of  a  parental  one.  Jack's  fellows  will  re- 
spect him  for  heady  base  running,  for  skillful  diving,  for 
an  ingenious  bit  of  handiwork.  Only  practice  in  instinc- 
tive competition  builds  self-assurance  in  it. 

The  purpose  of  formal  education  is  twofold:  first,  to 
bring  together  persons  of  similar  ages  for  the  develop- 
ment of  a  normal  play-life;  second,  to  develop  specific 
aptitudes  which  will  be  of  value  in  achieving  economic 
independence.  In  the  earlier  years  of  schooling,  their 
role  is  nearly  equal ;  the  discipline  of  the  three  R's  yields 
little,  in  its  value  for  the  child,  to  the  discipline  of  the 
recess.  Gradually,  less  essential  studies  come  into  the 
curriculum,  and  the  discipline  of  "  student  activities " 
becomes  more  important.  When  college  is  reached,  there 
can  be  little  question  that,  in  practice,  the  extra-curricular 
activities  are  more  important  for  the  future  than  those  of 
the  classroom.  It  is  closer  to  the  tests  of  actual  life  to 
be  successful  in  track  athletics,  in  student  dramatics,  as 


BALANCING  FACTORS  315 

the  business  manager  of  such  activities,  and  in  student 
politics  also,  than  to  be  successful  in  almost  any  per- 
formance of  the  classroom.15  The  college  has  become, 
very  likely  for  the  best,  a  school  of  social  experience, 
with  the  curriculum  one  of  the  symbols  of  its  group- 
community.  Some  of  its  disciplines  train  one  for  no 
other  service  than  teaching  them.  The  best  balanced 
student  or  teacher  does  not  regard  the  curriculum  as  the 
essential  purpose  of  the  college  career.  Thus  a  teacher's 
personal  qualifications  are  often  of  greater  importance 
than  his  professional  accomplishments. 

Of  educated  people,  psychopathologists  give  the  most 
depreciative  opinions  of  the  present  formal  education. 
"  First  we  must  learn  to  stop  doing  harm ;  then  we  may 
learn  to  do  good,"  is  the  remark  of  one.  That  is,  they 
think  it  does  not  contribute  to  the  individual's  adjust- 
ment to  life  a  share  commensurate  with  what  is  spent 
upon  it.16  To  understand  how  this  opinion  arises,  one 
should  recall  the  fundamental  conception  of  this  adjust- 
ment as  a  balance  of  the  instinctive  life.  It  is  then  ob- 
served how  consistent  is  formal  education  with  the  main- 
tenance of  this  balance. 

There  is  much  in  it  that  fares  hard  by  such  a  criterion, 
the  classics  perhaps  hardest  of  all.  Their  economic  value 
is  negligible,  and  their  satisfactions  are  egoistic,  such  as 
do  not  meet  the  usual  demands  of  adult  personality. 
This  applies  to  the  humanities  in  general.  Sometimes 
they  are  commended  for  providing  intellectual  "  re- 
sources," when  other  satisfactions  fail.  But  the  very 

15  Cf.  Joseph  Lee,  "Athletics  and   Education,"  Harvard  Alumni 
Bulletin,  18  (1916),  572-574.    Also  Hollingworth,  "Vocational  Psy- 
chology," 166-167. 

16  Cf.  also   Abraham   Flexner,   "Parents   and    Schools,"  Atlotttic 
Monthly  (July,  1916),  25-33. 


I 


316  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

cultivation  of  "  resources  "  can  help  the  deeper  satisfac- 
tions to  fail.  When  a  man  begins  a  long  journey,  he  does 
not  burden  himself  with  crutches  lest  he  fall  lame.  He 
takes  proper  footgear,  that  he  may  go  quickly,  with  no 
need  for  crutches. 

The  sciences  fare  proportionately  better,  having  closer 
contacts  with  practical  life,  and  drawing  the  attention 
more  to  phenomena  outside  oneself.  Regarded  solely 
from  the  resource  standpoint,  the  invitations  of  nature 
study  to  outdoor  existence,  with  the  sociable  elements 
that  are  often  combined,  make  them  healthier  reactions 
than  the  humanities. 

"  Too  much  teaching  and  too  little  training  "  is  a  criti- 
cism of  deeper  level.  Teaching  is  easier  than  training, 
because  teaching  is  simply  to  know,  while  training  is  to 
do.  The  play-life  of  "  student  activities  "  trains,  where 
the  classroom  stops  at  teaching.  "  Book-learning," 
Sumner  reminds  us,17  "  is  addressed  to  the  intellect,  not  to 
the  feelings,  but  the  feelings  are  springs  of  action  .  .  . 
the  education  that  governs  character  .  .  .  comes  through 
personal  influence  and  example.  It  is  borne  on  the 
mores.  It  is  taken  in  from  the  habits  and  atmosphere  of 
the  school,  not  from  school  textbooks."  Outside  of  vo- 
cational training,  the  higher  formal  education  provides 
balancing  factors  only  in  the  more  restricted  sense  de- 
scribed on  page  274.  The  Talmud  to  the  contrary,18 
knowledge  is  no  more  a  method  of  happiness  than  is 
wealth.  Wealth  is  a  means  to  happiness  if  it  buys  the 
right  things ;  education  is  a  means  to  happiness  if  it  learns 
the  right  things.  The  one  method  of  happiness  through 

17  "  Folkways,"  629. 

18  "  The  study  of  the  law  is  of  even  greater  merit  than  to  rescue 
one  from  accidental  death,  than  building  the  Temple,  and  greater 
than  honoring  father  or  mother."    Moses,  Path.  A.  Rel.,  141. 


BALANCING  FACTORS  317 

education,  wealth  or  anything  else,  was  inscribed  on  a 
certain  abbey  gate:  Fay  ce  que  vouldras.19  The  incon- 
sistency of  education  with  happiness  begins  where  it 
evades  the  instinctive  life;  where  it  teaches  the  con- 
scious to  play  the  instincts  false,  and  divides  the  per- 
sonality against  itself. 

With  the  growth  of  the  vocational  training  idea,  it  may 
be  expected  that  formal  education  will  come  more  and 
more  into  harmony  with  economic  trends.  Efficient 
vocational  training  needs  wiser  choice  of  vocation  than 
the  adolescent  himself  is  in  a  position  to  make  when  the 
choice  should  be  made.  Such  greater  wisdom,  fortu- 
nately, there  is  reason  to  look  for  elsewhere.  An  old 
story  exists  of  a  man  who  tested  his  son  by  leaving  him 
alone  with  a  dollar,  an  apple  and  a  mouth  organ.  If  he 
displayed  chief  interest  in  the  dollar,  he  should  be  a 
banker;  in  the  apple,  a  farmer;  in  the  mouth  organ,  a 
musician.  Returning  to  find  the  mouth  organ  sounding 
vigorously,  the  apple  a  core,  and  the  dollar  in  the  boy's 
pocket,  he  decided  on  a  political  career  for  his  son.  This 
little  myth  is  the  popular  expression  of  a  principle  that 
reaches  a  more  scientific  form  in  the  concepts  of  affective 
transference  and  sublimation.  The  idea  is  to  lead  the 
energy  into  useful  actions  which  are  enough  like  the  child- 
ish interest  to  make  such  a  transference  effective.  The 
instances  of  the  water  can  and  the  bridge  builder  may  be 
recalled ;  and,  on  a  higher  level,  the  superb  allegory  of 
sublimation  in  "  Christopher  Hibbault,  Roadmaker." 
Thus  the  genius  in  vocational  guidance  determines  the 
useful  paths  into  which  most  of  the  childish  energy  will 
most  readily  be  transferred. 

19  Compare  Beechnut's  instructions  to  Stuyvesant  on  the  subject 
of  travel. 


318  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

Format  education  as  we  know  it,  does  not  concern 
itself  with  erotic  trends.  Often  there  is  no  attempt  at 
their  direction  by  those  having  most  natural  interest  in 
the  adolescent's  welfare.  The  reason  for  this  is  a 
vaguely  defined  tabu  known  as  "  sex-resistance,"  the 
strongest  irrational  force  in  modern  life.  Its  source 
is  not  known.  Keller  ascribes  it  to  religion.  Bleuler 
follows  it  to  more  individual  sources,  but  without 
his  usual  convincingness.20  A  general  tendency  for  no- 
tions of  sacredness  and  uncleanness  to  fuse  in  the  human 
mind  may  be  suggested  in  partial  explanation.  The  re- 
sult is  to  prevent  any  formal  discipline  regarding  erotic 
trends,  or  to  pervert  its  effects.  Jung  makes  the  sug- 
gestion that  the  tabu  is  more  in  evidence  now  than  for- 
merly, because  the  function  of  religion  as  a  balancing 
factor  in  sexual  suppression  is  breaking  down.  Lacking 
this  balance,  eroticism  begins  to  reassert  itself,  and,  con- 
flicting with  the  tabu,  makes  a  large  share  of  the  "  nerv- 
ousness "  of  modern  civilized  life.21 

In  fine,  doubt  must  be  thrown  upon  the  value  of  edu- 
cation that  operates  simply  to  increase  the  content  of  the 
conscious.  The  moral  philosopher  of  Dotheboys  Hall 
was  mistaken ;  it  is  when  a  boy  does  a  thing,  that  he  goes 
and  learns  it.  The  reverse  of  the  half-truth,  that  "  what 
people  don't  know  doesn't  hurt  them,"  is  that  what 
people  do  know  often  fails  to  help  them.22  The  char- 

20  "  Der  Sexualwiderstand,"  Jahrb.  f.  psa.  u.  psp.  Forsch.,  5  (1913), 
442-452. 

21  The  reader  familiar  with  Jung's  words  [Jahrb.  f.  psa.  «.  psp. 
Forsch.  3  (1912),  186-187]  ™ay  be  interested  to  compare  them  with 
some  sentences  from  H.  G.  Wells'  "Time  Machine":  "Ages  ago, 
thousands  of  generations  ago,  man  had  thrust  his  brother  man  out  of 
the  ease  and  sunlight  of  life.     And  now  that  brother  was  coming  back 
—  changed.     Already  the  Eloi  had  begun  to  learn  one  old  lesson 
anew.    They  were  becoming  acquainted  again  with  Fear."     (Ch.  IX.) 

22  "  And  the  God  that  you  took  from  a  printed  book  be  with  you, 
Tomlinson !  " 


BALANCING  FACTORS  319 

acteristics  of  practice  partly  illustrate  this.  The  most 
perfect  conscious  imagery  of  the  keyboard  does  not  avail 
to  operate  the  typewriter.  How  often  does  the  operator 
tell  us  that  if  she  "  thinks  where  the  keys  are  "  she  makes 
a  mistake?  The  skillful  typist  or  marksman  does  his 
work  without  "  knowing  "  what  he  does,  without  having 
the  actions  represented  in  consciousness.  The  correct  re- 
actions were  represented  in  consciousness  only  during  the 
unskillful  period  of  learning.  The  role  of  consciousness 
in  all  active  accomplishments  diminishes  as  practice  per- 
fects them.  In  bicycle  riding,  the  right  reactions  are 
probably  never  dependent  on  consciousness. 

A  practiced  chess  player  may  make  the  opening  move 
of  a  game  automatically.  As  the  game  develops,  he  will 
not  guard  his  queen  from  threatened  attack  unless  he  is 
aware  of  a  threat  to  his  queen.  When  a  normal  man 
thus  adapts  himself  rightly  to  a  new  situation,  the  reaction 
is  regularly  represented  in  consciousness.  But  the  aware- 
ness that  the  queen  is  threatened  operates  simply  to  bring 
ideas  into  function  for  protecting  the  piece ;  and  we  saw 
from  Chapter  VI  that  the  means  he  takes  to  protect  his 
queen  are  by  no  means  derived  wholly  from  conscious 
sources.  It  was  also  pointed  out  that,  in  dissociated 
states,  good  adjustments  to  complicated  situations  are 
possible  without  the  mediation  of  personal  consciousness. 
Nor  are  similar  instances  quite  lacking  in  normal  life;  23 
this  very  last  foothold  of  consciousness  upon  mental  ad- 
justments grows  insecure.  Doing  the  right  thing,  even 
if  it  is  a  new  thing,  does  not  necessarily  depend  on  con- 
sciousness of  what  is  right  to  do,  or  why  it  is  right 

28  In  the  "  relational  test "  of  his  adult  scale,  Yerkes  makes  special 
provision  for  subjects  who  can  make  the  correct  reaction  in  practice, 
but  do  not  have  it  formulated  in  consciousness  clearly  enough  to  ex- 
plain how  they  do  it. 


320  MENTAL  ADJUSTMENTS 

When,  therefore,  happiness  is  defined  as  "  the  con- 
scious phase  of  mental  adaptation,"  this  does  not  involve 
a  consciousness  of  the  right  thing  to  do.  It  means  that 
the  consciousness  which  supervenes  on  doing  the  right 
thing  is  a  happy  one.  It  need  not  be  a  consciousness  of 
what  has  been  done.  The  well-being  that  results  from 
good  digestion  is  the  conscious  phase  of  its  proper  pro- 
cedure, but  gives  no  knowledge  of  what  has  become  of  the 
food. 

The  condition  of  mental  adaptation  is  a  right  system 
of  behavior-patterns.  The  functioning  of  these  gives 
happiness  whether  they  themselves  are  represented  in 
consciousness  or  not.  "  The  representation  in  conscious- 
ness of  the  generally  best  adapted  reactions,"  is  a  prag- 
matic definition  of  truth.  In  the  sense  that  conscious- 
ness is  often  a  necessary  forerunner  of  correct  reactions, 
it  is  the  truth  that  makes  us  free.  But  how  often 
have  the  prototypes  and  successors  of  Galileo  and  Jenner 
shown  that  the  truth  makes  no  one  free  who  is  not  free 
to  perceive  the  truth?  The  Florentine  astronomer  could 
not  acknowledge  the  satellites  of  Jupiter,  because  he  al- 
ready had  contrary  illusions  that  meant  too  much  to  his 
peace  of  mind.  As  a  simple  mistake,  having  no  value 
to  him  per  se,  it  would  easily  be  corrected  by  the  contrary 
evidence.  An  illusion  is  an  error  that  balances  some  need 
in  one's  life,  and  is  fought  for  desperately  until  that  need 
is  otherwise  filled.  The  truth  is  only  to  those  whose 
mental  balance  is  already  maintained  in  freedom  from 
illusions. 


INDEX  OE  PROPER  NAMES 


A,  Case,  187 

A,  Personality,  253,  263 
Abbot,  E.  S.,  174 
Abraham,  K.,  284 
Adams,  H.  F.,  257 
Adler,  A.,  118,  290 
Ahkoond  of  Swat,  122 
Athanasian  Creed,  216 

B,  Case,  191 

B,  Personality,  253,  263 

B.  C.     A.,     Case     (Morton 
Prince's),  171 

Bakairi,  37 

Von  Bechterew,  131-132 

Beckett,  62 

Beechnut,  317 

Bible,  293 

Binet,  231,  236,  239-240 

Bleuler,  46-47,  57,  68,  318 

Bourne,  A.,  Case,  179,  185 

Braune,  87 

Bridges,  233 

Brill,  A.  A.,  8,  19,  308 

Bryant,  II 

Buffalo,  50,  51 

Busch,  W.,  281 

C,  Case,  i92ff 
Campbell,  C.  M.,  106,  280 
Cannon,  130-131 
Carmen,  123 

Cattell,  246,  271 
Charles  W.,  Case,  181 
China,  67 
Christ,  191,  220 

22  321 


"  Christopher  Hibbault,  Road- 
maker,"  n,  317 
Conrad,  Joseph,  49 
Courtis,  271 
Crane,  W.  M.,  260 
Crile,  227 
Curschmann,  163 

D,  Case,  188 
Davenant,  246 
Dickens,  117,  214 
Doll,  234 

Don  Juan,  152,  280 
Don  Quixote,  33 
Dooley,  L.,  261 
Dotheboys  Hall,  318 

Ellis,  Havelock,  36 

Elmira,  65 

Englischer   Garten,    119,    124, 

126,  127,  134 
Epicureans,  21 
Europe,  at  war,  297 

F,  Case,  636%  69,   186,  i96ff, 

2IO,  2l8,   221 

Felida,  Case,  181-185,  202 

Ferenczi,  126,  135,  262,  308 

Fernald,  G.  G.,  251,  252,  255 

Field,  Eugene,  124 

Fitch  burg,   no 

Flexner,  A.,  315 

Frazer,  45,  53,  57,  58,  84,  85, 

92-94,  215 
Freud,  41,  105,  108,  109,  150, 

307 


INDEX  OF  PROPER  NAMES 


Galileo,  320 
Ganges,  14 
Geissler  tubes,  29-43 
Goddard,  H.  H.,  240 

H,  Case,  199^ 

Haines,  254,  255 

Hanna,  Case  :(Sidis'),  170 

Hardwick,  233 

Hart,  B.,  118,  153,  212,  214 

Haverhill,  65 

Hawaii,  64 

Hawthorne,  250 

Healy,  235-238,  240,  255,  271, 

309 

Henry,  O.,  40 
Hickman,  59 
Hill,  A.  S.,  77 
Hirschfeld,  284 
Hoch,  August,  109,  156,  185, 

211,  221,  284 
Hollingworth,     99,     241-242, 

256,  266,  271,  315 
Holmes,  O.  W.,  24,  97,  307 

J,  Case,  191,  195-196,  210,  214, 
Jabberwock,  60 
Jackson,  A.  V.  W.,  76 
James,  Wm.,  46,  108,  130,  155, 

179,  215,  225 
Janet,  P.,  127,  156,  158,  160, 

166,  170,  176 
Japan,  64,  66 
Jenner,  320 
Jewish  race,  309 
Jones,  Ernest,  130,  138 
Julius  Caesar,  213,  214 
Jung,  42,  46,  55,  76,  221,  261, 

265,  271,  280,  290,  318 
Jupiter  (god),  27 
Jupiter  (planet),  89 


Kamadhuk,  278 
Keller,  48,  215,  227,  318 
Kent,  G.  H.,  263 
Kipling,  96 
Kirby,  208 
Knox,  238 

Kraepelin,  59,  97,  98 
Kuhlmann,  232,  234 

L,  Case,  187,  189,  191 

Lanigan,  121 

Lavalle,  101-102 

Lawrence,  65 

Leacock,  101-102,  123 

Lee,  Joseph,  315 

Leonidas,  261 

Lincoln,  A.,  35 

"  Little  Willie  "  verses,  123 

Loewenfeld,  280 

Lowell,  65 

Lusitania-cap  dream,  120,  148, 

217 
Lustige  Blaetter,  109 

M,  Case,  190 

Macallum,  45 

Macbeth,  91 

McDougall,  Wm.,  54,  149,  282 

Malagasy,  48,  57,  58,  60 

Marceline,  Case,  181 

Marston,  248 

Mary,  Virgin,  212 

Mayer,  182 

Meirowsky,  280 

Me  r ton,  40 

Meyer,  A.,  205 

Mill,  191 

Milton,  246 

Missourian,  70 

Mitchell,  Weir,  168 

Monte  Cristo,  10 

Moore,  266 


INDEX  OF  PROPER  NAMES 


323 


Moses,  Josiah,  58,  93,  191,  316     Rittershaus,  260 

Rosanoff,  263 
Rumpelstilzkin,  90 


N,  Case,  190 
Nakashima,  131 
Niagara,  297 
Nietzsche,  29,  204 
Norsworthy,  266 

Oppenheim,  163 
Ossip-Lourie,  236 
"  Owl,"  the,  109 


P,  Case,  62,  69 

Parmelee,  164 

Partridge,  82 

Pawlow,  131 

Pearson,  Karl,  16 

Pecksniff,  117 

Pennsylvania,  63 

Pericles,  191 

Pfister,  49,  104,  105,  117,  119, 

139.    J43»    144.    147.    169. 

217,   220,   260,    288,    308,      Swift,  72,  121 

310 

Pintner,  235,  239 
Pittsburgh,  50-51 
Poe,  10,  1 08,  247-248 
Prince,  Morton,  104,  127,  128, 


S,  Case,  61,  69 

Sadger,  137,  141,  147,  283 

Salem,  65 

Sanskrit,  63,  76 

Schmitt,  236 

Scott,  W.  D.,   125,   126,   133, 

137.  271 

Scripture,  E.  W.,  89 
Shakespeare,  21,  246 
Sidis,  170 
Silberer,  no 
Simplicissimus,  281 
Spenser,  248 
Strong,  E.  K.,  256,  271 
Sumner,  F.  B.,  248-249 
Sumner,  W.  G.,  48,  72,  82,  90, 

140,   282,   293,    295,   306, 

316 


Tahiti,  58 

Tait,  128,  129,  133-135 
Talmud,  316 
Tell,  William,  294 

161,    165,     Terman,  162,  232,  234,  271 
169,    181,    182,    185,    208,      Thoreau,  250,  255 

Thorndike,  271 
Tobin,  310-311 
Tucker,  68,  71 


217,  219,  223 
Prince,  W.  F.,  202 
Pullman,  37 


Qabala,  58 
Queensland,  65 

R,  Case,  216 
Rabelais,  121 
Read,  48 

Reynolds,  Case  (Weir  Mitch- 
ell's), 168 


Unitarian,  60 
Uranus,  168 
Utopia,  272 

Vischer,  59 

Walton,  G.  L.,  163 
Walton,  Tzaak,  271 


324  INDEX  OF  PROPER  NAMES 

Washington,  248  X,  Miss,  126,  127,  135,  142 

Wells,  H.  G.,  60,  318 

Will-i-am,  63,  68  Yerkes,  233-235,  239,  271,  319 

Wittemann,  Case,  181 

Woolley,  271  Zulu,  58 

Wiirzburg,  60 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS 


Abstraction,  169 
Action,  test  of,  255,  258 
Adaptability,  268 
Adaptation,  3 

faulty,  31  ff 

laboratory,  4 

mental,  229,  303 

sexual,  I7ff 
Advertisements,     testing     of, 

257 

Advertising,  70,  125 
relative  position  method  in, 

255-258 
Affect,  114 

free-floating,  265 
Affection,  parental,  306 
Affective  displacement,  115 
in  dreams,  120 
in  wit,  121-124 
Affective        symbolism,        in 

dreams,  i48ff,  289 
by  similarity,   144 
by  temporal  contiguity,  143 
Affective    transference,    rela- 
tion of,  to  conditioned  re- 
flex, 133-134 

through  the  unconscious,  226 
Akohcl,  42 

Alcoholic  hallucinosis,  211 
Alcoholism,     speech    symbols 

of,  82,  95,  289 
Allegory,  85. 
Amnesia,  episodic,  167 

systematic,  167 
Amoeba,  I,  7 
Amusement,  social,  295 

880 


Anesthesia,  systematic,  164 

Anger,  33 

Angst-dream,  120,  148 

Ants,  35,  294 

Aphasia,  205 

Art,  272 

Association,  controlled,  259 

experiments,  258 

free,  259ff 

test,  244-245 

time,  259 

Associative  thinking,  46-47 
Astronomer,  Florentine,  251 
Attention,  164 
Attitude  toward  others,  269 
Authors,  American,  247 
Autistic  thinking,  46,  55,  71, 

215 

Autoerotism,  117,  279,  298 
Autohedonic  trends,  310-311 
Automatic,  the,  201-202 
Automatic   writing,    129,    167, 

I7iff 
Awareness,  135-137,  162,  166- 

167,  186,  224 

Balance,  mental,  274 
in    instinctive    life    as    re- 
lated to  association  test, 
262 

Balance  wheel,  273 

Balancing  factors,  270,  273ff 

Bees,  66,  294 

Behavior-patterns,  30,  34,  320 

Bell-towefs,  case  fearing,  129- 
130,  I43>  148,  167,  219 


326 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS 


Betrothal  delirium,  212 
Bicycling,  14 
relation  of,  to  consciousness, 

319 
Brown,    case    disliking,    128, 

I43»  219 
Burglars  in  the  garden,  145 


Camphor  language,  84 
Caresses,  307 
Carrots,  146 
Cases,  A,  187 
B,  191 

B,  C.  A.,  171 
Bourne,  179,  185 

C,  I92ff 
Charles  W.,  181 

D,  188 

F,  63ff,  69,  186,  i96ff,  210 

2l8,   221 

Felida,  181-185,  202 
H,  I99ff 
Hanna,  170 

J,  191,  195-196,  210,  214 
L,  187,  189,  191 
M,  190 

Marceline,  181 
N,  190 
P,  62,  69 
R,  216 

Reynolds,  168 
S,  61,  69 
Wittemann,  181 
Cause  and  effect,  conceptions 

°i,  52-55 
Chess,  6 

relation    of,    to    conscious- 
ness, 226,  319 
Chifed,  60 

Children,  only,  308-310 
role  of,  in  marriage,  282-285 


Civilization,  as  a  transference 

process,  290 
Classics,  315 
Cloak,  1 02 
Companionship,   marital,   281, 

283 
Compensation,   affective,    116, 

312 
Complex,  63,  118 

indicators,  260,  261 
Conduct,  as  related  to  ideas, 

250 

moral,  251-253 
Conflict,  3,  34 
in  dissociation,  207ff 
in  ideas,  2i3ff 
internal,  366* 
Conscious,  the,  251,  254,  255, 

288,  318,  319 
Consciousness,  49ff 
as        distinguished        from 

awareness,   169 
personal,  127,  156 
Consistency    of    trends,    275, 

285ff 

Constipation,  146 
Construction  tests,  236 
Contractures,  159 
Conversion,  hysterical,  144 
Coupon,  return,  258 
Crabs,  66-67 
Critical  points,  n,  48 
Cube  test  (Knox),  239 
Curtain,  102 

Dancing,  19 

Daydream,  9,  II 

Death,  speech-symbols  of,  79 

Death-wish,  299 

Decapitation,   of  trends,  296- 

297 
Deference,  habits  of,  309 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS 


327 


Deliria,  wish-fulfilling,  9 
Dementia  praecox,  55,  61,  116, 

184,  197 

content  of  trends  in,  209,  211 
its     dissociation     compared 

with  somnambulism,  199 
Dictates,  187 
Directive  thinking,  47 
Displacement,    affective,    115, 

151 
Dissociation,  153 

hysterical,  I56ff 

of  ideas  and  memories,  i66ff 

of  motor  functions,  157-161 

normal,  155 

organic,  205-206 

of  perceptions,  i6iff 

by  practice,  154 

simultaneous,  173 

six  types  of,  157 

of  speech,  160 

successive,  174 

as  on  switchboard,  161 
Divine  Mind,  190-191 
Dodos,  31 

Dog,  34,  35,  37,  292 
Dollar,  speech-symbols  of,  78 
Dream,  58 

language  in,  59-60 

showing  affective  symbolism 
of,  I48ff 

symbolism  in,  g6ff 
Dynamo,  28 

Economic  trends,  286-294 
Economy,  political,  151 
Education,  26,  305ff 

consistency  of,  with  mental 

balance,  315 

Egocentric  associations,   261  ff 
Electricity,  28,  273ff 

as  a  sexual  symbol,  221-222 


Elephant,  88 
Emotion,  25 

continuity  of,  151-152 

James-Lange  theory  of,  130 
Energy,  output  of,  267 

vital,  28,  43-44 
Environment,  24 

infantile,  307 
Eugenics,  283 
Evolution,  2 

Externalization,    in    Case    C, 
192-195 

rationalizations  of,  204 

See  also  Projection 

Fable,  85 

Father,  return  to,  221 
Fatigue,  cause  of  dream-sym- 
bolism, no 
Fetishism,  144 
Finger-peeling,  146 
Firearms,  313 
Fits  of  sleep,  170 
Fixations,  infantile,  138,  141 

regressive,  307-309 
Flywheel,  273 
Fox  and  grapes,  8,  22 
Free-floating  affects,  135 
Free-will,  215 
Fugue,  I76ff 
Fusion,  affective,  126 

General  paralysis,  118 
Generalizing,    in    speech-sym- 
bols, 8iff 

Geology,  193,  296-297 
Graves'  Disease,  188 
Grilling,  of  mind,  187 

Hallucinations,  184 
relation  of,  to  delusions,  212 
sex-difference  in,  210-211 


328 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS 


Happiness,  278,  302,  316,  320 
Hedonism,  sexual,  283 
Hemiplegia,  functional,  159 
Herd  instinct,  295 
Heredity,  24,  307 
House-cleaning,  affective  sym- 
bolism of,  146 
Hydra,  87 
Hyena,  88 
Hypermnesia,  167 
Hypnosis,  127,  129 

Ideas  of  reference,  190 
Identification,    in    symbolism, 

68,  86ff,  142 
Imagination,  9ff,  41-42 
Inbreeding,  284 
Individual  differences,  228ff 
Influence,  ideas  of,  12 
Insects,  phobia  of,  147 
Instinct,  30 
Integration,  154 

relation  of,  to  delusions,  213 
Intellectual  processes,  grading 

of,  267 
Intelligence,  34 

measures  of,  230-232 
Intelligence  quotient,  234-235 
Interest,  tending  to  symbolism, 

8off 

Interjections,  142 
Introjection,  262 
Introversion,  41-42,  310 
Intrusive  thoughts,  186 
Intuition,  70,  272 

Kidneys,  57 
Kindergarten,  311 

Language,  as  factor  in  tests, 

236 

origin  of,  72ff 
Lion,  87 


Loading     of     affects,     I26ff, 

265-266 

Loose  words,  189 
Love,  38,  143 
Love-life,  28off 

Magic,  53 
contagious,  94 
imitative,  91 
sympathetic,  54,  91 

Magnetism,  198 

Main  personality,  223 

Manic-depressive  psychosis, 
183-185 

Manual  training  school,  252 

Marriage,  2off,  265-266,  274, 
281-284 

Masturbation,  143,  146-147, 
280 

Memory,  relation  of,  to  affec- 
tive transference,  127, 
135-136 

Mental  balance,  24,  242 

Mind-talk,  187 

Money,  23 
as  balancing  factor,  275 

Mood,  general  cast  of,  269 
as  related  to  content  of  mem- 
ory, 183 

Moral  conduct,  251,  253 

Moral  perception,  254 

Moral  sense,  251-253 

Moral  sphere,  of  personality, 
268 

Mores,  280,  295,  302 

Multiple  choice  method,  239 

Multiple  personality,  176,  I78ff 

Music,  in  parody,  122 

Myth,  317 

Name,  in  sympathetic  magic, 
50 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS 


329 


Nascent  dissociative  symbol- 
ism, 220 

Natural  selection  of  ideas,  52, 
90 

Nightmare,  105 

Nurses,  253 

Offenses,  estimates  of  gravity 

of,  251-255 
One-girl  man,  152 
Opinions,  personal,  249 
Opposites  test,  259 

Paralysis,  systematic,  160-161 
Paramecium,  34 
Paraplegia,  functional,  159 
Patriotism,  295-296,  299 
Performance,  measures  of,  230 

tests  of,  236 
Personal  equation,  228 
Personality,    and    association 
experiment,  26 iff 

dissociated,  184,  250 

main,  156 

multiple,  176,  i78ff 

system  for  measurement  of, 

266-270 

Persuasiveness,    in    advertise- 
ments, 256 
Phonograph,  49 
Pictorial  completion  test,  236 
Pocket  money,  312 
Poets,  English,  246 
Point-scale,  233 
Pregnancy,  nervous,  212 
Progression,  306-307,  314 
Projection,  of  ideas,  188,  197 

See  also  Externalization 
Pronouns,  75 

Prostitution,  280-281,  291 
Psychoanalysis,  104,  136,  288 


Psychologists,     leading,    246- 

247 
Psychology,  animal,  3 

dynamic,  7,  87,  245 

experimental,  227ff, 

vocational,  240 
Pun,  56 

Rain,  50,  101 

Rationalization,    I2ff,    22,    38, 

54,  85,  287,  293-294 
Reactions,  to  attitudes,  269 

choice,  3,  242-244 

defense,  139 

to  delusions,  214 

emotional,  130, 

false,  3 

mental,  6,  50,  250 

psychomotor,  230 

remoteness  of,  33 

time  of,  246 

time  of  emotional  responses 

to,  131 

Realistic  thinking,  46ff,  215 
Reality,  position  toward,  270 
Recreations,  268,  301 
Reflex,  30 

conditioned    or    associative, 
132 

psychogalvanic,  260 
Reformatory,  252 
Regression,  150,  283,  290,  293, 

299,  306.  311 

Regressive  fixations,  307-309 
Relational  test,  319 
Relative  position,  230,  24jff 
Religion,  15*?,  53,  70,  274,  289, 

293 
Repression       of       unpleasant 

memories,  136 
Resistance,    Uatrapsychic,    36, 

105 


330 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS 


Resistance,  sexual,  318 

in  unhappy  marriage,  288 
Revelation,  62 
"  Root,  hog,  or  die,"  313 

Sales  letters,  257 

Scales,    intelligence,    231-236, 
271 

Schizophrenia,  57,  197,  202 

School,  311 

Science,  54 

Seduction,  253 

Self-assertion,  268 

Self-assurance,  312 

Selfish    and    unselfish    trends, 
279,  290,  292,  298,  301 

Service,  social,  295,  300 
military,  296 

Sexual  selection,  284 

Sexuality,  i7ff,  35 
dissociation  of  trends,  207 
internal  conflicts  of,  37-39 
in  speech  symbols,  83-84 
sphere   of   personality,    270, 

274,  279-286,  302 
symbolized      in      electrical 
processes,  221-222 

Siphoning,       affective,       130, 


Siren,  88 
Sissies,  313 
Short  circuit,  40,  296 
Social  service,  300 
Social  trends,  294-302 
Somnambulism,      dominating, 
181 

monoideic,  175 

recalls     ability     to     write, 

180 

Spes  phthisica,  1  18 
Spider,  2,  32,  39 
Stability,  mental,  224 


Standards,  affective,  121 
Stimulus-word,  259 
Student  activities,  314-316 
Sublimation,    I5off,    266,    279, 

304,  317 

Suicide,  39,  253,  299 

Symbolism,  54,  71 
affective,  I42ff 
conditions  favoring,  78ff 
criterion  of,  95 
dissociative,  102,  2i8ff 
in  dreams,  96ff 
in  dream-ideas,  99-113 
in  dream-speech,  97-99 
in  figures  of  speech,  76ff 
rational,  142 
by  sound  association,  75 
in  speech, 

Sympathy,  25 

Tabu,  48,  57,  82-84,  138,  140, 

Telephone,  54,  56,  57 
Temperament,  240,  242 
Tennis,  102 
Thermostat,  106 
Thumbsucking,  310 
Tiger,  40,  141,  294 
Transference,  affective,  19,  21, 
i26ff,  317 

from    excretory    to    erotic 
trends,  139 

in  the  unconscious,  226. 
Transformer,  305 
Trend,  economic,  37 

economic,      sexual,      social 

(q-v.),  30.34 

fundamental,  29 
Trends,  outside  personal  con- 
sciousness, 211 
subject  to  functional  or  or- 
ganic dissociation,  206 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS 


331 


Tropism,  30,  33 
Truth,  making  free,  320 
Tubes,  Geissler,  29,  43 
Twenty-three,  95 
Typewriting,  241,  319 

Uebertragung,  126,  130 

Unconscious,  the,  105 
metaphors  of,  168-169 
release  of,  172,  207-208,  223, 
224-226,  251,  258 

Urine,  137,  141 

Violin,  147 
Viper,  88 
Virgin  Birth,  215 


Virgin,  wise,  285 
Vocational  selection,  24off,  270 
Vocational  training,  317 
Voices,  accepted  or  repudiated, 
191 

Wealth,    acquisition   of,    290- 

293 

expenditure  of,  289-290 
Whipping,  143 
Wireless,  53 
Wish-fulfillment,  9,    68 
Wolf,  2 
Work,  habits  of,  268 

transferred  joy  in,  292 

Year-scale,  232 


(3) 


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